Effects of emotionally charged sounds in schizophrenia patients using exploratory eye movements: Comparison with healthy subjects

Abstract

Aims: Emotion‐associated sounds have been suggested to exert important effects upon human personal relationships. The present study was aimed to characterize the effects of the sounds of crying or laughing on visual cognitive function in schizophrenia patients. Methods: We recorded exploratory eye movements in 24 schizophrenia patients (mean age, 27.0 ± 6.1 years; 14 male, 10 female) and age‐matched controls. The total eye scanning length (TESL) and total number of gaze points in the left (left TNGP) and right (right TNGP) visual fields of the screen and the number of researching areas (NRA) were determined using eye‐mark recording in the presence/absence of emotionally charged sounds. Results: Controls' TESL for smiling pictures was longer than that for crying pictures irrespective of sounds. Patients' TESL for smiling pictures, however, was shorter than for crying pictures irrespective of the sounds. The left TNGP for smiling pictures was lower in patients than controls independent of sound. Importantly, the right TNGP was significantly larger with laughing sounds than in the absence of sound. In controls, the NRA for smiling pictures was significantly greater than for crying pictures irrespective of sound. Patient NRA did not significantly differ between smiling and crying pictures irrespective of sound. Conclusion: Eye movements in schizophrenia patients' left field for smiling pictures associated with laughing sounds particularly differed from those in controls, suggesting impaired visual cognitive function associated with positive emotion, also involving pleasure‐related sounds, in schizophrenia.

Modulation of affective face processing deficits in Schizophrenia by congruent emotional sounds

“…This finding extends previous research investigating exploratory eye movements in schizophrenia when confronted with audiovisual information, demonstrating that patients showed an increase in total number of gaze points when looking at a smiling face of a baby accompanied by laughter compared with processing the face in isolation ( Ishii et al , 2010 ). Therefore, presenting a congruent sound may increase visual attention and hence cortical processing of visual stimuli in patients.…”

Preferential decoding of emotion from human non-linguistic vocalizations versus speech prosody

“…Differences in cultural background (Liu et al, 2015), social orientation (Ishii et al, 2010), and neuroticism (Brück et al, 2011) are known to alter neural responses to emotional auditory stimuli, and there are growing indications in the literature that cognitive biases present in highly anxious individuals promote differential sensitivity to the type and quality of vocal emotion cues they encounter (Kreifelts et al, 2014;Martin-Soelch et al, 2006;Peschard et al, 2014;Schirmer & Escoffier, 2010). To build on these insights, NOT THE FINAL VERSION we therefore monitored the relationship between core measures of (state or trait) anxiety and personality characteristics of our participants in the context of processing emotional vocalizations and emotional speech.…”

Effects of Emotionally Affect Adult and Baby’ Photographs in Healthy Controls and Schizophrenic Patients Evaluating by Exploratory Eye Movements

“…Ishi et al [17] reported that left TNGP EYE MOVEMENTS BETWEEN MOTHER AND BABY IN SCHIZOPHRENIA was smaller in schizophrenia patients under positive affection with voice and suggested that left eye scanning function could be a trait marker of schizophrenia, similar to previous reports [10]. In the present study, left TNGP under both versions (version 1: left mother, version 2: left baby) differed between patients and controls, especially depending on the location (left or right) of the mother.…”