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Updated: Jul 13, 2025

Author Spotlight: Investigating the Impact of Emotional Prosodies on Voice Recognition and Perception
Published on: August 9, 2024
Vocal emotion perception in schizophrenia and its diagnostic significance
Wenxuan Zhao1, Qi Zhang2, Huimei An1
1Beijing HuiLongGuan Hospital, Peking University HuiLongGuan Clinical Medical School, No 7, HuangtuNandian, ChangPing District, Beijing, 100096, China.
Background:
Cognitive and emotional impairment are among the core features of schizophrenia; assessment of vocal emotion recognition may facilitate the detection of schizophrenia. We explored the differences between cognitive and social aspects of emotion using vocal emotion recognition and detailed clinical characterization.
Methods:
Clinical symptoms and social and cognitive functioning were assessed by trained clinical psychiatrists. A vocal emotion perception test, including an assessment of emotion recognition and emotional intensity, was conducted. One-hundred-six patients with schizophrenia (SCZ) and 230 healthy controls (HCs) were recruited.
Results:
Considering emotion recognition, scores for all emotion categories were significantly lower in SCZ compared to HC. Considering emotional intensity, scores for anger, calmness, sadness, and surprise were significantly lower in the SCZs. Vocal recognition patterns showed a trend of unification and simplification in SCZs. A direct correlation was confirmed between vocal recognition impairment and cognition. In diagnostic tests, only the total score of vocal emotion recognition was a reliable index for the presence of schizophrenia.
Conclusions:
This study shows that patients with schizophrenia are characterized by impaired vocal emotion perception. Furthermore, explicit and implicit vocal emotion perception processing in individuals with schizophrenia are viewed as distinct entities. This study provides a voice recognition tool to facilitate and improve the diagnosis of schizophrenia.
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