Department of Speech and Language Therapy, Faculty of Health Sciences, İzmir Bakırçay University, Izmir, Turkey.
Department of Speech and Language Therapy, Faculty of Health Sciences, Ankara Yıldırım Beyazıt University, Ankara, Turkey.
Int J Lang Commun Disord. 2024 Nov-Dec;59(6):2497-2515. doi: 10.1111/1460-6984.13097. Epub 2024 Aug 13.
Emotional prosody is the reflection of emotion types such as happiness, sadness, fear and anger in the speaker's tone of voice. Accurately perceiving, interpreting and expressing emotional prosody is an inseparable part of successful communication and social interaction. There are few studies on emotional prosody, which is crucial for communication, and the results of these studies have inconsistent information regarding age and gender.
The primary aim of this study is to assess the perception of emotional prosody in healthy ageing. The other aim is to examine the effects of variables such as age, gender, language and neurocognitive capacity on the prediction of emotional prosody recognition skills.
Sixty-nine participants between the ages of 18-75 were included in the study. Participants were grouped as the young group aged 18-35 (n = 26), the middle-aged group aged 36-55 (n = 24) and the elderly group aged 56-75 (n = 19). Perceptual emotional prosody test, motor response time test, and neuropsychological test batteries were administered to the participants. Participants were asked to recognise the emotion in the sentences played on the computer. Natural (neutral, containing neither positive nor negative emotion), happy, angry, surprised and panic emotions were evaluated with sentences composed of pseudoword stimuli.
It was observed that the elderly group performed worse in recognising angry, panic, natural and happy emotions and in total recognition, which gives the correct recognition performance in recognition of all emotions. There was no age-related difference in recognition of the emotion of surprise. The women were more successful in recognising angry, panic, happy and total emotions compared to men. Age and Motor Reaction Time Test scores were found to be significant predictors in the emotional response time regression model. Age, language, attention and gender variables were found to have a significant effect on the regression model created for the success of total recognition of emotions (p < 0.05).
This was a novel study in which emotional prosody was assessed in the elderly by eliminating lexical-semantic cues related to emotional prosody and associating emotional prosody results with neuropsychiatric tests. All our findings revealed the importance of age for the perception of emotional prosody. In addition, the effects of cognitive functions such as attention, which decline with age, were found to be important. Therefore, it should not be forgotten that many factors contribute to the success of recognising emotional prosody correctly. In this context, clinicians should consider variables such as cognitive health and education when assessing the perception of emotional prosody in elderly individuals.
What is already known on the subject Most of the studies compare young and old groups, and these studies evaluate the perception of emotional prosody by using sentences formed by observing the speech sounds, syllables, words and grammar rules in the vocabulary of the language. It has been reported that the perception of emotional prosody is lower, mostly in the elderly group, but there is inconsistent information in terms of age and gender. What this paper adds to existing knowledge Perceptual Prosody Recognition was evaluated with an experimental design in which sentence structures consisting of lexemes were used as stimuli and neurocognitive tests were included, taking into account the phonological and syntactic rules of language. This study was a novel study in diagnosing emotional prosody in terms of comparing different age groups and determining the factors affecting multidimensional emotional prosody, including neuropsychiatric features. What are the clinical implications of this work? All our findings revealed the importance of age for the perception of emotional prosody. In addition, it was determined that the effects of cognitive functions such as attention were important with age.
情感韵律是说话者语调中快乐、悲伤、恐惧和愤怒等情绪类型的反映。准确感知、解释和表达情感韵律是成功沟通和社交互动不可或缺的一部分。关于情感韵律的研究很少，而这对于沟通至关重要，这些研究的结果在年龄和性别方面存在不一致的信息。
本研究的主要目的是评估健康老年人对情感韵律的感知。另一个目的是研究年龄、性别、语言和神经认知能力等变量对情感韵律识别技能预测的影响。
本研究纳入了 69 名年龄在 18-75 岁之间的参与者。参与者被分为青年组（18-35 岁，n=26）、中年组（36-55 岁，n=24）和老年组（56-75 岁，n=19）。对参与者进行感知情感韵律测试、运动反应时测试和神经心理测试。参与者被要求识别计算机上播放的句子中的情绪。使用由伪词刺激组成的句子评估自然（中性，既不含积极情绪也不含消极情绪）、快乐、愤怒、惊讶和恐慌情绪。
观察到老年组在识别愤怒、恐慌、自然和快乐情绪以及总识别方面表现较差，而在识别所有情绪的正确识别表现上得分较低。在识别惊讶情绪方面，年龄之间没有差异。女性在识别愤怒、恐慌、快乐和总情绪方面比男性更成功。情绪反应时回归模型表明，年龄和运动反应时测试分数是显著的预测因子。发现年龄、语言、注意力和性别变量对为总情绪识别成功创建的回归模型有显著影响（p<0.05）。
这是一项新颖的研究，通过消除与情感韵律相关的词汇语义线索，并将情感韵律结果与神经精神病学测试相关联，在老年人中评估情感韵律。我们所有的发现都揭示了年龄对情感韵律感知的重要性。此外，还发现随着年龄增长而下降的注意力等认知功能的影响也很重要。因此，不应忘记许多因素有助于正确识别情感韵律。在这种情况下，临床医生在评估老年人的情感韵律感知时，应考虑认知健康和教育等变量。
大多数研究将年轻组和老年组进行比较，这些研究通过观察语言词汇中的语音、音节、单词和语法规则来评估情感韵律的感知。据报道，感知情感韵律的能力较低，主要是在老年组，但在年龄和性别方面存在不一致的信息。
使用由词素组成的句子结构作为刺激，纳入神经认知测试，考虑语言的语音和句法规则，以实验设计评估感知韵律。这项研究是一项新颖的研究，比较了不同的年龄组，并确定了影响多维情感韵律的因素，包括神经精神病特征。
我们所有的发现都揭示了年龄对情感韵律感知的重要性。此外，还发现随着年龄增长而下降的注意力等认知功能的影响也很重要。
