A meta-analysis of the relationship between emotion recognition ability and intelligence

Emotion recognition in individuals with elevated internet addiction scores: An event-related potential study

The current study aims to elucidate the electrophysiological correlates of performance patterns in an emotion recognition task among individuals with higher internet addiction (HIA) scores compared to those with lower internet addiction (LIA) scores. Forty participants, with twenty in the HIA group and twenty in the LIA group, completed an emotion recognition task, involving five facial expressions: anger, fear, disgust, neutral, and sadness. Additionally, cognitive flexibility and working memory were assessed to examine their link to emotion recognition abilities. No significant differences in accuracy or reaction times (RTs) were observed between the groups in the emotion recognition task. However, the HIA group showed reduced P150 amplitudes, but increased N250 amplitudes relative to the LIA group. There was a positive correlation between the RTs and cognitive flexibility, only in the LIA group. Although the groups demonstrated comparable behavioral performance, the stages of stimuli processing differed. The LIA group appeared to process the stimuli more efficiently in the early stage, while the HIA group required greater effort in decoding the stimuli at a later stage. This suggests that the HIA group may rely on over-processing at a later stage due to reduced early processing efficiency, potentially suggesting an early vulnerability marker.

Vocal Emotion Recognition in School-Age Children With Hearing Aids

OBJECTIVES

In individuals with normal hearing, vocal emotion recognition continues to develop over many years during childhood. In children with hearing loss, vocal emotion recognition may be affected by combined effects from loss of audibility due to elevated thresholds, suprathreshold distortions from hearing loss, and the compensatory features of hearing aids. These effects could be acute, affecting the perceived signal quality, or accumulated over time, affecting emotion recognition development. This study investigates if, and to what degree, children with hearing aids have difficulties in perceiving vocal emotions, beyond what would be expected from age-typical levels.

DESIGN

We used a vocal emotion recognition test with non-language-specific pseudospeech audio sentences expressed in three basic emotions: happy, sad, and angry, along with a child-friendly gamified test interface. The test group consisted of 55 school-age children (5.4 to 17.8 years) with bilateral hearing aids, all with sensorineural hearing loss with no further exclusion based on hearing loss degree or configuration. For characterization of complete developmental trajectories, the control group with normal audiometric thresholds consisted of 86 age-matched children (6.0 to 17.1 years), and 68 relatively young adults (19.1 to 35.0 years).

RESULTS

Vocal emotion recognition of the control group with normal-hearing children and adults improved across age and reached a plateau around age 20. Although vocal emotion recognition in children with hearing aids also improved with age, it seemed to lag compared with the control group of children with normal hearing. A group comparison showed a significant difference from around age 8 years. Individual data indicated that a number of hearing-aided children, even with severe degrees of hearing loss, performed at age-expected levels, while some others scored lower than age-expected levels, even at chance levels. The recognition scores of hearing-aided children were not predicted by unaided or aided hearing thresholds, nor by previously measured voice cue discrimination sensitivity, for example, related to mean pitch or vocal tract length perception.

CONCLUSIONS

In line with previous literature, even in normal hearing, vocal emotion recognition develops over many years toward adulthood, likely due to interactions with linguistic and cognitive development. Given the long development period, any potential difficulties for vocal emotion recognition in children with hearing loss can only be identified with respect to what would be realistic based on their age. With such a comparison, we were able to show that, as a group, children with hearing aids also develop in vocal emotion recognition, however, seemingly at a slower pace. Individual data indicated a number of the hearing-aided children showed age-expected vocal emotion recognition. Hence, even though hearing aids have been developed and optimized for speech perception, these data indicate that hearing aids can also support age-typical development of vocal emotion recognition. For the children whose recognition scores were lower than age-expected levels, there were no predictive hearing-related factors. This could be potentially reflecting inherent variations related to development of relevant cognitive mechanisms, but a role from cumulative effects from hearing loss is also a possibility. As follow-up research, we plan to investigate if vocal emotion recognition will improve over time for these children.

The inter-association between face processing, intelligence, and autistic-like nonverbal communication

The degree to which face processing abilities inter-relate, and associate with general intelligence, remains a contentious issue. Furthermore, poorer face processing abilities may be a result of reduced social interest associated with higher levels of trait-autism, consistent with the social motivation theory of autism. However, the association between multiple dimensions of face processing (i.e., a general face factor) and trait-autism, specifically autistic-like nonverbal communication, has not been estimated. Consequently, we administered four face processing ability tests (assessing face detection, the perception and memory of face identity, and expression recognition), four cognitive ability tests, and the Autism Quotient to a sample of 253 general community adults. Based on latent variable modelling, we identified a general face processing ability factor (f), and it was positively associated with general intelligence (g; λ = .48). We conclude that face processing abilities may be a candidate ability within the Cattell-Horn-Carroll model of intelligence. Moreover, face memory was positively associated with g (β = .31). We discuss the possibility of developmental prosopagnosia, i.e., deficits in face memory, being diagnosed as a learning disability. Furthermore, autistic-like nonverbal communication was a significant, negative predictor (β = -.45) of f, and g was neither a mediator nor suppressor of the effect. Finally, the unique effect between autistic-like nonverbal communication difficulties and face processing abilities, independently of intelligence, was considered in line with the social motivation theory of autism.

Emotion Recognition Accuracy Among Individuals With ADHD: A Systematic Review

OBJECTIVE

The aim of the present systematic review was to consolidate findings related to emotion recognition accuracy among individuals with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). The review also examined emotion recognition accuracy assessment methods as well as the contribution of gender to emotional recognition accuracy.

METHOD

A total of 43 articles were identified based on inclusion criteria using PRISMA guidelines for article retrieval.

RESULTS

58% of retrieved articles reported significantly decreased emotion recognition accuracy among individuals with ADHD relative to neurotypical peers, with either global or emotion-specific differences identified. Notably, studies finding a significant difference in emotion recognition accuracy were of significantly lower quality according to a quality review checklist than the articles finding no difference (p < .001). For example, when use of control conditions and multiple measures of emotion recognition accuracy were employed, no study found a significant difference in emotion recognition accuracy between individuals with and without ADHD. Regarding potential gender differences, not a single study included gender diversity beyond sex assigned at birth. The majority (86%) of studies included a predominantly male sample, with 15% including only male participants. While differences in emotion recognition accuracy were found between male and female participants in 7% of cases, future research is needed to identify the contribution of gender diversity.

How a strong measurement validity review can go astray: A look at and recommendations for future measurement-focused reviews

Critical reviews of a test's measurement validity are valuable scientific contributions, yet even strong reviews can be undermined by subtle problems in how evidence is compiled and presented to readers. First, if discussions of poor reporting practices by a test's users are interwoven with discussions about validity support for the test itself, readers can be inadvertently misled into impressions of the latter which are improperly conflated with the former. Second, test reviewers should give at least as much careful attention to a test's external validity as to its structural validity; test reviewers who prioritize factor analysis and internal consistency at the expense of discriminant and convergent validity can inadvertently mislead readers into perceptions of a test which are more negative or more positive than is warranted by the evidence overall. In this commentary, we aim to help test evaluators in crafting critical investigations of measurement validity. We use Higgins et al.'s (2024) review of the Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test (RMET; Baron-Cohen et al., 2001) as a basis for discussion. We argue that their otherwise impressive review went astray in the two ways described above. After considering both the psychometric evidence that Higgins et al. (2024) provided and the external validity evidence that they did not provide, we conclude that their recommendations that the RMET should be abandoned, and that most prior research findings based on it should be reassessed or disregarded, are unwarranted.

Effects of a neuropsychosocial teleassistance intervention on social cognition and health-related quality of life of pediatric patients with neuromuscular diseases

OBJECTIVE

This study aimed to determine the effects of a neuropsychosocial teleassistance group-based intervention on improving social cognitive functioning and health-related quality of life (HRQoL) in pediatric neuromuscular diseases (NMD).

METHODS

Thirty-five pediatric patients with NMD were assigned to the neuropsychosocial intervention program (n = 20) or waiting list control condition (n = 15). The intervention group received an integrative approach that combines training in social cognition with cognitive behavioral therapy. All participants completed a neuropsychological and clinical assessment at baseline and follow-up, which included tests of social cognition, both for emotion recognition and theory of mind, and HRQoL. Repeated-measures multivariate analysis of covariance was used to determine the effects of the teleassistance program.

RESULTS

Group × Time interactions revealed significant improvements in the intervention group as compared with the control group for different social cognition's indicators (AR NEPSY-II: p = .003, η2p = .24; TM NEPSY: p < .001, η2p = .35; Verbal task: p < .001, η2p = .35; Happé's Strange Stories: p = .049, η2p = .11) and HRQoL (Psychosocial health: p = .012, η2p = .18; Emotional functioning: p = .037, η2p = 0.13; Social functioning: p = .006, η2p = .21; Total: p = .013, η2p = .17), showing medium to large effects.

CONCLUSIONS

Patients receiving the neuropsychosocial intervention showed improvements in their social cognition performance and psychosocial HRQoL, providing evidence about the positive effects of the program in pediatric patients with NMD. This should be considered in further research and interventions in this field.

Face perception and facial emotional expression recognition ability: Both unique predictors of the broader autism phenotype

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and the broader autistic phenotype (BAP) have been suggested to be associated with perceptual-cognitive difficulties processing human faces. However, the empirical results are mixed, arguably, in part due to inadequate samples and analyses. Consequently, we administered the Cambridge Face Perception Test (CFPT), the Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test (RMET), a vocabulary test, and the Autism Quotient (AQ) to a sample of 318 adults in the general community. Based on a disattenuated path analytic modelling strategy, we found that both face perception ability (β = -.21) and facial emotional expression recognition ability (β = -.27) predicted uniquely and significantly the Communication dimension of AQ. Vocabulary failed to yield a significant, direct effect onto the Communication dimension of the AQ. We conclude that difficulties perceiving information from the faces of others may contribute to difficulties in nonverbal communication, as conceptualised and measured within the context of BAP.

Neural correlates of individual differences in multimodal emotion recognition ability

Studies have reported substantial variability in emotion recognition ability (ERA) - an important social skill - but possible neural underpinnings for such individual differences are not well understood. This functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study investigated neural responses during emotion recognition in young adults (N = 49) who were selected for inclusion based on their performance (high or low) during previous testing of ERA. Participants were asked to judge brief video recordings in a forced-choice emotion recognition task, wherein stimuli were presented in visual, auditory and multimodal (audiovisual) blocks. Emotion recognition rates during brain scanning confirmed that individuals with high (vs low) ERA received higher accuracy for all presentation blocks. fMRI-analyses focused on key regions of interest (ROIs) involved in the processing of multimodal emotion expressions, based on previous meta-analyses. In neural response to emotional stimuli contrasted with neutral stimuli, individuals with high (vs low) ERA showed higher activation in the following ROIs during the multimodal condition: right middle superior temporal gyrus (mSTG), right posterior superior temporal sulcus (PSTS), and right inferior frontal cortex (IFC). Overall, results suggest that individual variability in ERA may be reflected across several stages of decisional processing, including extraction (mSTG), integration (PSTS) and evaluation (IFC) of emotional information.

Difficulties in social cognitive functioning among pediatric patients with muscular dystrophies

Introduction

Pediatric muscular dystrophies (MDs) are a heterogeneous group of rare neuromuscular diseases characterized by progressive muscle degeneration. A neuropsychosocial approach is crucial for these patients due to associated cognitive, behavioral, and psychiatric comorbidities; however, the social cognitive domain has not been adequately addressed.

Methods

This study aimed to analyze on social cognition performance in a pediatric MD patient cohort. This cross-sectional study included 32 pediatric patients with MD and 32 matched-healthy controls. The Social Perception Domain of the NEPSY-II, the Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test-Child and Happé's Strange Stories Test were administered. General intelligence and behavioral and emotional symptoms were controlled for to eliminate covariables' possible influence. The assessments were performed remotely.

Results

Children with MDs performed significantly worse on most of the social cognition tasks. The differences found between the groups could be explained by the level of general intelligence for some aspects more related to theory of mind (ToM) (TM NEPSY-II: F = 1.703, p = .197; Verbal task: F = 2.411, p = .125; RMET-C: F = 2.899, p = .094), but not for emotion recognition. Furthermore, these differences were also independent of behavioral and emotional symptoms.

Discussion

In conclusion, social cognition is apparently impaired in pediatric patients with MD, both for emotion recognition and ToM. Screening assessment in social cognition should be considered to promote early interventions aimed at improving these patient's quality of life.

Social cognition in DMD and BMD dystrophinopathies: A cross-sectional preliminary study

Objective: The dystrophinopathies called Duchenne and Becker muscular dystrophies (DMD/BMD) are rare, progressive, incurable, and life-limiting paediatric-onset neuromuscular diseases. These diseases have long been associated with specific neuropsychological deficits. However, the performance of these patients in the social cognition domain has not been properly investigated. Thus, the main objective of this study was to compare the performance on social cognition between DMD/BMD patients and healthy age-matched boys. Method: This cross-sectional study included 20 DMD/BMD children and adolescents and 20 healthy controls. The protocol included the Social Perception Domain of the NEPSY-II, the Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test - Child and Happé's Strange Stories test. General intelligence was controlled to eliminate the possible influence of covariables. All the assessments were performed remotely. Results: Most social cognition tasks were worse in patients with DMD/BMD than in matched healthy controls. These differences remained even after controlling for the general intelligence variable, with the exception of Total Disgust Errors (F = 1.462, p = .234, η2p= .038) and Verbal task (F = 1.820, p = .185, η2p= .047) scores from the NEPSY-II. Conclusions: This is the first study to demonstrate that the neuropsychological domain of social cognition is impaired in DMD/BMD patients, independent of the level of general intelligence. Screening assessments in DMD/BMD patients should be promoted to allow social cognition difficulties to be detected at an early stage to enhance patients' quality of life and social development.

Emotional valence perception in music and subjective arousal: Experimental validation of stimuli

Musical stimuli are widely used in emotion research and intervention studies. However, reviews have repeatedly noted that a lack of pre-evaluated musical stimuli is stalling progress in our understanding of specific effects of varying music. Musical stimuli vary along a plethora of dimensions. Of particular interest are emotional valence and tempo. Thus, we aimed to evaluate the emotional valence of a set of slow and fast musical stimuli. N = 102 (mean age: 39.95, SD: 13.60, 61% female) participants rated the perceived emotional valence in 20 fast (>110 beats per minute [bmp]) and 20 slow (<90 bpm) stimuli. Moreover, we collected reports on subjective arousal for each stimulus to explore arousal's association with tempo and valence. Finally, participants completed questionnaires on demographics, mood (profile of mood states), personality (10-item personality index), musical sophistication (Gold-music sophistication index), and sound preferences and hearing habits (sound preference and hearing habits questionnaire). Using mixed-effect model estimates, we identified 19 stimuli that participants rated to have positive valence and 16 stimuli that they rated to have negative valence. Higher age predicted more positive valence ratings across stimuli. Higher tempo and more extreme valence ratings were each associated with higher arousal. Higher educational attainment was also associated with higher arousal reports. Pre-evaluated stimuli can be used in future musical research.

Executive functions are important for academic achievement, but emotional intelligence too

Finding predictors of academic achievement has caught the interest of many educational researchers in the last decades. Two of the variables that have received considerable attention are emotional intelligence (EI) and executive functions (EF). However, only a few studies have considered their influence in the primary school stage. The aim of this study is to identify which EI components and specific EF are most related to academic achievement and to explore if these relationships vary among subjects. The sample comprised of 180 students between 8-11 years old. We administered the BarOn EI Inventory, tasks of EF and tests of mathematic and linguistic competences. The results showed that EF are better predictors of school performance than EI. Inhibition and working memory were the EF most associated with achievement while adaptability emerged as the EI dimension most linked to it. This study suggests that EI and EF should be consciously developed in classrooms.

Mothers need more information to recognise associated emotions in child facial expressions

Parenting requires mothers to read social cues and understand their children. It is particularly important that they recognise their child's emotions to react appropriately, for example, with compassion to sadness or compersion to happiness. Despite this importance, it is unclear how motherhood affects women's ability to recognise emotions associated with facial expressions in children. Using videos of an emotionally neutral face continually and gradually taking on a facial expression associated with an emotion, we quantified the amount of information needed to match the emotion with the facial expression. Mothers needed more information than non-mothers to match the emotions with the facial expressions. Both mothers and non-mothers performed equally on a control task identifying animals instead of emotions, and both groups needed less information when recognising the emotions associated with facial expressions in adolescents than pre-schoolers. These results indicate that mothers need more information for to correctly recognise typically associated emotions in child facial expressions but not for similar tasks not involving emotions. A possible explanation is that child facial expressions associated with emotions may have a greater emotional impact on mothers than non-mothers leading to task interference but possibly also to increased compassion and compersion.

Facial affect recognition in first-episode psychosis is impaired but not associated with psychotic symptoms

Introduction

Aims

Method

Results

Discussion

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Impaired affect recognition (FAR) present already in first episode psychosis (FEP).

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Preserved FAR of happiness found in individuals with FEP.

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Individuals with FEP mainly have impaired FAR of negative affects.

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Both FEP and controls mainly mistook negative affects for other negative affects.

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Psychotic symptoms are not associated with FAR in individuals with FEP.

Evaluating the neuropeptide-social cognition link in ageing: the mediating role of basic cognitive skills

The roles of oxytocin (OT) and arginine-vasopressin (AVP) as crucial modulators of social cognition and related behaviours have been extensively addressed in the literature. The involvement of these neuropeptides in social cognition in ageing, however, and a potential mediating effect of basic cognitive capacities on this link, are not well understood. To fill these research gaps, this study assessed associations of plasma OT and AVP levels with dynamic emotion identification accuracy in generally healthy older men (aged 55-95 years) and probed the underlying roles of crystallized and fluid cognition in these associations. Higher plasma OT levels were associated with lower accuracy in dynamic emotion identification, with this negative relationship fully mediated by cognition. For plasma AVP levels, in contrast, there was no association with dynamic emotion identification accuracy. Integrated within existing theoretical accounts, results from this study advance understanding of the neuropeptide-social cognition link in ageing and support basic cognitive capacities as mediators in this association. This article is part of the theme issue 'Interplays between oxytocin and other neuromodulators in shaping complex social behaviours'.

EmBody/EmFace as a new open tool to assess emotion recognition from body and face expressions

Nonverbal expressions contribute substantially to social interaction by providing information on another person’s intentions and feelings. While emotion recognition from dynamic facial expressions has been widely studied, dynamic body expressions and the interplay of emotion recognition from facial and body expressions have attracted less attention, as suitable diagnostic tools are scarce. Here, we provide validation data on a new open source paradigm enabling the assessment of emotion recognition from both 3D-animated emotional body expressions (Task 1: EmBody) and emotionally corresponding dynamic faces (Task 2: EmFace). Both tasks use visually standardized items depicting three emotional states (angry, happy, neutral), and can be used alone or together. We here demonstrate successful psychometric matching of the EmBody/EmFace items in a sample of 217 healthy subjects with excellent retest reliability and validity (correlations with the Reading-the-Mind-in-the-Eyes-Test and Autism-Spectrum Quotient, no correlations with intelligence, and given factorial validity). Taken together, the EmBody/EmFace is a novel, effective (< 5 min per task), highly standardized and reliably precise tool to sensitively assess and compare emotion recognition from body and face stimuli. The EmBody/EmFace has a wide range of potential applications in affective, cognitive and social neuroscience, and in clinical research studying face- and body-specific emotion recognition in patient populations suffering from social interaction deficits such as autism, schizophrenia, or social anxiety.

Personal Intelligence Is Evident in the Sophistication of People's Narratives about Personality

Personal intelligence concerns the ability to understand personality in oneself and others-including the understanding of motives, socioemotional traits, and abilities. We examined if people's scores on the ability-based Test of Personal Intelligence (TOPI) would be reflected in their narratives about someone whose personality they had learned about. In a Preliminary Study (N = 220), we collected narratives and open-ended descriptions about their learning. In Study 1 (N = 212), experts rated the respondents' open-ended narratives for their sophistication about personality, defined as their knowledge and complexity of thought around the topic. Respondents also filled out checklists concerning what they learned and their relationship outcomes. Study 2 (N = 299) was a replication and extension in which we added the TOPI. Participants who scored higher on the TOPI produced narratives higher in Sophistication, even after statistical controls for Word Count and Vocabulary (the measures also were largely independent of the Big Five). The findings here may have applications for both testing and training.

A multimodal psychological, physiological and behavioural dataset for human emotions in driving tasks

Human emotions are integral to daily tasks, and driving is now a typical daily task. Creating a multi-modal human emotion dataset in driving tasks is an essential step in human emotion studies. we conducted three experiments to collect multimodal psychological, physiological and behavioural dataset for human emotions (PPB-Emo). In Experiment I, 27 participants were recruited, the in-depth interview method was employed to explore the driver's viewpoints on driving scenarios that induce different emotions. For Experiment II, 409 participants were recruited, a questionnaire survey was conducted to obtain driving scenarios information that induces human drivers to produce specific emotions, and the results were used as the basis for selecting video-audio stimulus materials. In Experiment III, 40 participants were recruited, and the psychological data and physiological data, as well as their behavioural data were collected of all participants in 280 times driving tasks. The PPB-Emo dataset will largely support the analysis of human emotion in driving tasks. Moreover, The PPB-Emo dataset will also benefit human emotion research in other daily tasks.

Is There a Difference in Facial Emotion Recognition after Stroke with vs. without Central Facial Paresis?

The Facial Feedback Hypothesis (FFH) states that facial emotion recognition is based on the imitation of facial emotional expressions and the processing of physiological feedback. In the light of limited and contradictory evidence, this hypothesis is still being debated. Therefore, in the present study, emotion recognition was tested in patients with central facial paresis after stroke. Performance in facial vs. auditory emotion recognition was assessed in patients with vs. without facial paresis. The accuracy of objective facial emotion recognition was significantly lower in patients with vs. without facial paresis and also in comparison to healthy controls. Moreover, for patients with facial paresis, the accuracy measure for facial emotion recognition was significantly worse than that for auditory emotion recognition. Finally, in patients with facial paresis, the subjective judgements of their own facial emotion recognition abilities differed strongly from their objective performances. This pattern of results demonstrates a specific deficit in facial emotion recognition in central facial paresis and thus provides support for the FFH and points out certain effects of stroke.

Searching for Best Predictors of Paralinguistic Comprehension and Production of Emotions in Communication in Adults With Moderate Intellectual Disability

Paralinguistic comprehension and production of emotions in communication include the skills of recognizing and interpreting emotional states with the help of facial expressions, prosody and intonation. In the relevant scientific literature, the skills of paralinguistic comprehension and production of emotions in communication are related primarily to receptive language abilities, although some authors found also their correlations with intellectual abilities and acoustic features of the voice. Therefore, the aim of this study was to investigate which of the mentioned variables (receptive language ability, acoustic features of voice, intellectual ability, social-demographic), presents the most relevant predictor of paralinguistic comprehension and paralinguistic production of emotions in communication in adults with moderate intellectual disabilities (MID). The sample included 41 adults with MID, 20–49 years of age (M = 34.34, SD = 7.809), 29 of whom had MID of unknown etiology, while 12 had Down syndrome. All participants are native speakers of Serbian. Two subscales from The Assessment Battery for Communication – Paralinguistic comprehension of emotions in communication and Paralinguistic production of emotions in communication, were used to assess the examinees from the aspect of paralinguistic comprehension and production skills. For the graduation of examinees from the aspect of assumed predictor variables, the following instruments were used: Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test was used to assess receptive language abilities, Computerized Speech Lab (“Kay Elemetrics” Corp., model 4300) was used to assess acoustic features of voice, and Raven’s Progressive Matrices were used to assess intellectual ability. Hierarchical regression analysis was applied to investigate to which extent the proposed variables present an actual predictor variables for paralinguistic comprehension and production of emotions in communication as dependent variables. The results of this analysis showed that only receptive language skills had statistically significant predictive value for paralinguistic comprehension of emotions (β = 0.468, t = 2.236, p < 0.05), while the factor related to voice frequency and interruptions, form the domain of acoustic voice characteristics, displays predictive value for paralinguistic production of emotions (β = 0.280, t = 2.076, p < 0.05). Consequently, this study, in the adult population with MID, evidenced a greater importance of voice and language in relation to intellectual abilities in understanding and producing emotions.

Functional patterns of neural activation during vocal emotion recognition in youth with and without refractory epilepsy

Epilepsy has been associated with deficits in the social cognitive ability to decode others' nonverbal cues to infer their emotional intent (emotion recognition). Studies have begun to identify potential neural correlates of these deficits, but have focused primarily on one type of nonverbal cue (facial expressions) to the detriment of other crucial social signals that inform the tenor of social interactions (e.g., tone of voice). Less is known about how individuals with epilepsy process these forms of social stimuli, with a particular gap in knowledge about representation of vocal cues in the developing brain. The current study compared vocal emotion recognition skills and functional patterns of neural activation to emotional voices in youth with and without refractory focal epilepsy. We made novel use of inter-subject pattern analysis to determine brain areas in which activation to emotional voices was predictive of epilepsy status. Results indicated that youth with epilepsy were comparatively less able to infer emotional intent in vocal expressions than their typically developing peers. Activation to vocal emotional expressions in regions of the mentalizing and/or default mode network (e.g., right temporo-parietal junction, right hippocampus, right medial prefrontal cortex, among others) differentiated youth with and without epilepsy. These results are consistent with emerging evidence that pediatric epilepsy is associated with altered function in neural networks subserving social cognitive abilities. Our results contribute to ongoing efforts to understand the neural markers of social cognitive deficits in pediatric epilepsy, in order to better tailor and funnel interventions to this group of youth at risk for poor social outcomes.

They Cannot, They Will Not, or We Are Asking the Wrong Questions: Re-examining Age-Related Decline in Social Cognition

Social cognition is critical for successfully navigating social relationships. Current evidence suggests that older adults exhibit poorer performance in several core social-cognitive domains compared to younger adults. Neurocognitive decline is commonly discussed as one of the key arbiters of age-related decline in social-cognitive abilities. While evidence supports this notion, age effects are likely attributable to multiple factors. This paper aims to recontextualize past evidence by focusing issues of motivation, task design, and representative samples. In light of these issues, we identify directions for future research to aide our understanding of social-cognitive aging.

General cognitive decline does not account for older adults' worse emotion recognition and theory of mind

Older adults have both worse general cognition and worse social cognition. A frequent suggestion is that worse social cognition is due to worse general cognition. However, previous studies have often provided contradictory evidence. The current study examined this issue with a more extensive battery of tasks for both forms of cognition. We gave 47 young and 40 older adults three tasks to assess general cognition (processing speed, working memory, fluid intelligence) and three tasks to assess their social cognition (emotion and theory-of-mind). Older adults did worse on all tasks and there were correlations between general and social cognition. Although working memory and fluid intelligence were unique predictors of performance on the Emotion Photos task and the Eyes task, Age Group was a unique predictor on all three social cognition tasks. Thus, there were relations between the two forms of cognition but older adults continued to do worse than young adults even after accounting for general cognition. We argue that this pattern of results is due to some overlap in brain areas mediating general and social cognition, but also independence, and with a differential rate of decline in brain areas dedicated to general cognition versus social cognition.

An exploration of the impact of contextual information on the emotion recognition ability of autistic adults

Studies of non‐autistic individuals and people with an intellectual disability show that contextual information impacts positively on emotion recognition ability, however, this area is not well researched with autistic adults. We investigated this using a static emotion recognition task. Participants completed an emotion recognition task in person or online. In total, 46 autistic participants and 379 non‐autistic participants completed the task. A linear mixed model showed that autistic adults had significantly lower accuracy when identifying emotions across all contexts, compared to control participants, even when contextual information was present. No significant effect of context was found in either group, nor was gender shown to be an influential variable. A supplementary analysis showed that higher scores on the Autism‐Spectrum Quotient led to lower scores on the emotion recognition task; no effect of context was found here either. This research adds to the limited work investigating the influence of contextual factors in emotion recognition in autistic adults. Overall, it shows that context may not aid emotion recognition in this group in the same way as it does for non‐autistic individuals.

Study protocol for the ETMED-L project: longitudinal study of mental health and interpersonal competence of medical students in a Swiss university using a comprehensive framework of empathy

INTRODUCTION

Physician interpersonal competence is crucial for patient care. How interpersonal competence develops during undergraduate medical education is thus a key issue. Literature on the topic consists predominantly of studies on empathy showing a trend of decline over the course of medical school. However, most existing studies have focused on narrow measures of empathy. The first aim of this project is to study medical students' interpersonal competence with a comprehensive framework of empathy that includes self-reported cognitive and affective empathy, performance-based assessments of emotion recognition accuracy, and a behavioural dimension of empathy. The second aim of the present project is to investigate the evolution of mental health during medical school and its putative link to the studied components of interpersonal competence. Indeed, studies documented a high prevalence of mental health issues among medical students that could potentially impact their interpersonal competence. Finally, this project will enable to test the impact of mental health and interpersonal competence on clinical skills as evaluated by experts and simulated patients.

METHODS AND ANALYSIS

This project consists of an observational longitudinal study with an open cohort design. Each year during the four consecutive years of the project, every medical student (curriculum years 1-6) of the University of Lausanne in Switzerland will be asked to complete an online questionnaire including several interpersonal competence and mental health measures. Clinical skills assessments from examinations and training courses with simulated patients will also be included. Linear mixed models will be used to explore the longitudinal evolutions of the studied components of interpersonal competence and mental health as well as their reciprocal relationship and their link to clinical skills.

ETHICS AND DISSEMINATION

The project has received ethical approval from the competent authorities. Findings will be disseminated through internal, regional, national and international conferences, news and peer-reviewed journals.

Are People-Centered Intelligences Psychometrically Distinct from Thing-Centered Intelligences? A Meta-Analysis

The Cattell–Horn–Carroll (CHC) or three-stratum model of intelligence envisions human intelligence as a hierarchy. General intelligence (g) is situated at the top, under which are a group of broad intelligences such as verbal, visuospatial processing, and quantitative knowledge that pertain to more specific areas of reasoning. Some broad intelligences are people-centered, including personal, emotional, and social intelligences; others concern reasoning about things more generally, such as visuospatial and quantitative knowledge. In the present research, we conducted a meta-analysis of 87 studies, including 2322 effect sizes, to examine the average correlation between people-to-people intelligences relative to the average correlation between people-to-thing-centered intelligences (and similar comparisons). Results clearly support the psychometric distinction between people-centered and thing-centered mental abilities. Coupled with evidence for incremental predictions from people-centered intelligences, our findings provide a secure foundation for continued research focused on people-centered mental abilities.

Facial Emotion Recognition and Executive Functions in Fibromyalgia

OBJECTIVE

The ability to accurately identify facial expressions of emotions is crucial in human interaction. Although a previous study suggested deficient emotional face recognition in patients with fibromyalgia, not much is known about the origin of this impairment. Against this background, the present study investigated the role of executive functions. Executive functions refer to cognitive control mechanisms enabling implementation and coordination of basic mental operations. Deficits in this domain are prevalent in fibromyalgia.

METHODS

Fifty-two fibromyalgia patients and thirty-two healthy individuals completed the Ekman-60 Faces Test, which requires classification of facial displays of happiness, sadness, anger, fear, surprise, and disgust. They also completed eight tasks assessing the executive function components of shifting, updating, and inhibition. Effects of comorbid depression and anxiety disorders, as well as medication use, were tested in stratified analyses of patient subgroups.

RESULTS

Patients made more errors overall than controls in classifying the emotional expressions. Moreover, their recognition accuracy correlated positively with performance on most of the executive function tasks. Emotion recognition did not vary as a function of comorbid psychiatric disorders or medication use.

CONCLUSIONS

The study supports impaired facial emotion recognition in fibromyalgia, which may contribute to the interaction problems and poor social functioning characterizing this condition. Facial emotion recognition is regarded as a complex process, which may be particularly reliant on efficient coordination of various basic operations by executive functions. As such, the correlations between cognitive task performance and recognition accuracy suggest that deficits in higher cognitive functions underlie impaired emotional communication in fibromyalgia.

Development and validation of film stimuli to assess empathy in the work context

A growing body of research suggests that empathy predicts important work outcomes, yet limitations in existing measures to assess empathy have been noted. Extending past work on the assessment of empathy, this study introduces a newly developed set of emotion-eliciting film clips that can be used to assess both cognitive (emotion perception) and affective (emotional congruence and sympathy) facets of empathy in vivo. Using the relived emotions paradigm, film protagonists were instructed to think aloud about an autobiographical, emotional event from working life and relive their emotions while being videotaped. Subsequently, protagonists were asked to provide self-reports of the intensity of their emotions during retelling their event. In a first study with 128 employees, who watched the film clips and rated their own as well as the protagonists’ emotions, we found that the film clips are effective in eliciting moderate levels of emotions as well as sympathy in the test taker and can be used to calculate reliable convergence scores of emotion perception and emotional congruence. Using a selected subset of six film clips, a second two-wave study with 99 employees revealed that all facet-specific measures of empathy had moderate-to-high internal consistencies and test–retest reliabilities, and correlated in expected ways with other self-report and test-based empathy tests, cognition, and demographic variables. With these films, we expand the choice of testing materials for empathy in organizational research to cover a larger array of research questions.

It Works Without Words

Abstract. Emotion recognition ability of emotions expressed by other people (ERA-O) can be important for job performance, leadership, bargaining, and career success. Traditional personnel assessment tools of this ability, however, are contaminated by linguistic skills. In a time of global work migration, more and more people speak a language at work that is not their mother tongue. Consequently, we developed and validated the Face-Based Emotion Matching Test (FEMT), a nonlinguistic objective test of ERA-O in gainfully employed adults. We demonstrate the FEMT’s validity with psychological constructs (cognitive and emotional intelligence, Big Five personality traits) and its criterion validity and interethnic fit.

Emotion Recognition from Realistic Dynamic Emotional Expressions Cohere with Established Emotion Recognition Tests: A Proof-of-Concept Validation of the Emotional Accuracy Test

Individual differences in understanding other people's emotions have typically been studied with recognition tests using prototypical emotional expressions. These tests have been criticized for the use of posed, prototypical displays, raising the question of whether such tests tell us anything about the ability to understand spontaneous, non-prototypical emotional expressions. Here, we employ the Emotional Accuracy Test (EAT), which uses natural emotional expressions and defines the recognition as the match between the emotion ratings of a target and a perceiver. In two preregistered studies (Ntotal = 231), we compared the performance on the EAT with two well-established tests of emotion recognition ability: the Geneva Emotion Recognition Test (GERT) and the Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test (RMET). We found significant overlap (r > 0.20) between individuals' performance in recognizing spontaneous emotions in naturalistic settings (EAT) and posed (or enacted) non-verbal measures of emotion recognition (GERT, RMET), even when controlling for individual differences in verbal IQ. On average, however, participants reported enjoying the EAT more than the other tasks. Thus, the current research provides a proof-of-concept validation of the EAT as a useful measure for testing the understanding of others' emotions, a crucial feature of emotional intelligence. Further, our findings indicate that emotion recognition tests using prototypical expressions are valid proxies for measuring the understanding of others' emotions in more realistic everyday contexts.

The Good, the Bad, and the Clever: Faking Ability as a Socio-Emotional Ability?

Socio-emotional abilities have been proposed as an extension to models of intelligence, but earlier measurement approaches have either not fulfilled criteria of ability measurement or have covered only predominantly receptive abilities. We argue that faking ability-the ability to adjust responses on questionnaires to present oneself in a desired manner-is a socio-emotional ability that can broaden our understanding of these abilities and intelligence in general. To test this theory, we developed new instruments to measure the ability to fake bad (malingering) and administered them jointly with established tests of faking good ability in a general sample of n = 134. Participants also completed multiple tests of emotion perception along with tests of emotion expression posing, pain expression regulation, and working memory capacity. We found that individual differences in faking ability tests are best explained by a general factor that had a large correlation with receptive socio-emotional abilities and had a zero to medium-sized correlation with different productive socio-emotional abilities. All correlations were still small after controlling these effects for shared variance with general mental ability as indicated by tests of working memory capacity. We conclude that faking ability is indeed correlated meaningfully with other socio-emotional abilities and discuss the implications for intelligence research and applied ability assessment.

Encoding of facial expressions in individuals with adult-onset myotonic dystrophy type 1

Introduction: Emotional issues are often reported among individuals with myotonic dystrophy type 1 (DM1) and some studies have suggested that deficits in ability to quickly encode emotions may contribute to these problems. However, poor performance on emotion encoding tasks could also be explained by a more general cognitive deficit (Full Scale IQ [FSIQ]), rather than a specific deficit in emotional processing. Since individuals with DM1 are known to exhibit difficulties in general cognitive abilities, it is important to account for FSIQ when evaluating emotion encoding. The aim of this study was to compare emotion encoding abilities between individuals with and without DM1, while adjusting for the impact of general cognitive abilities (FSIQ). Methods: The sample included 35 individuals with adult-onset DM1 and 54 unaffected adults who completed assessments of emotion encoding abilities (Ekman faces test) and general cognitive abilities (Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale-IV). Performance on the emotion encoding task was operationalized as proportion correct and response time. Group differences in proportion correct were evaluated with generalized linear regression, while linear regression models were used to determine the effect of group on response time. Models were adjusted for age, sex, and FSIQ. The false discovery rate (FDR) was applied to control false positives due to multiple comparisons (pfdr ). Results: No significant group differences were observed for emotion encoding abilities (all pfdr > 0.13). FSIQ was significantly associated with proportion correct and with response time (all pfdr < 0.05). Conclusions: Emotion encoding appears intact in individuals with DM1 and variation in the ability to encode facial expressions was associated with FSIQ. Further research is required to address the relationship between general cognitive abilities and emotion encoding abilities among DM1 patients.

Emotion Processing in Children with Conduct Problems and Callous-Unemotional Traits: An Investigation of Speed, Accuracy, and Attention

This study aimed to assess whether callous-unemotional traits (CU) are associated with deficits in emotion recognition independent of externalizing behavior and whether such deficits can be explained by aberrant attention. As previous studies have produced inconsistent results, the current study included two different emotion recognition paradigms and assessed the potential influence of factors such as processing speed and attention. The study included N = 94 children (eight to 14 years) with an oversampling of children with conduct problems (CP) and varying levels of CU-traits. Independent of externalizing behavior, CU-traits were associated with slower recognition of angry, sad and fearful facial expressions but not with higher error rates. There was no evidence that the association between CU-traits and emotion processing could be explained by misguided attention. Our results implicate that in children with high levels of CU-traits emotion recognition deficits depend on deficits in processing speed.

Social cognition and executive functions in children and adolescents with focal epilepsy

OBJECTIVES

Deficits in facial emotion recognition and Theory of Mind are frequent in patients with epilepsy. Although this evidence, studies on pediatric age are few and the relation between these abilities and other cognitive domain remains to be better elucidated. The purpose of our study is to evaluate facial emotion recognition and Theory of Mind in children and adolescents with focal epilepsy, and correlate them with intelligence and executive functions.

MATERIALS AND METHODS

Our work is a cross-sectional observational study. Sixty-two children and adolescents aged between 7-16 years diagnosed by focal epilepsy and 32 sex/age-matched controls were recruited. All participants were administered a standardized battery tests to assess social cognition (NEPSY-II), executive functions (EpiTrack Junior) and cognitive non-verbal level (Raven Progressive Matrices).

RESULTS

Emotion recognition mean score was significantly lower in the epilepsy group than in the controls to Student's t-test (p<0.05). Epilepsy group showed an impairment in happiness, sadness, anger and fear recognition, compared to controls (p<0.05). Theory of Mind mean score was also significantly lower in epilepsy group than controls (p<0.05). Deficits in emotion recognition seemed to be related to low age at onset of epilepsy, long duration of disease, low executive functions and low non-verbal intelligence. Deficits in Theory of Mind seemed to be related to a high seizure frequency.

CONCLUSIONS

Our results suggest that children and adolescents with focal epilepsy had deficit in facial emotion recognition and Theory of Mind, compared to their peer. Both these difficulties seem to be related to some features of epilepsy itself. Our results also suggest that deficits in facial emotion recognition are potentially related to difficulties in executive functions and non-verbal intelligence. More studies are needed to confirm these hypotheses.

An Examination of Ability Emotional Intelligence and Its Relationships with Fluid and Crystallized Abilities in a Student Sample

This study investigated correlative, factorial, and structural relationships between scores for ability emotional intelligence in the workplace (measured with the Geneva Emotional Competence Test), as well as fluid and crystallized abilities (measured with the Intelligence Structure Battery), carried out by a 188-participant student sample. Confirming existing research, recognition, understanding, and management of emotions were related primarily to crystallized ability tests measuring general knowledge, verbal fluency, and knowledge of word meaning. Meanwhile, emotion regulation was the least correlated with any other cognitive or emotional ability. In line with research on the trainability of emotional intelligence, these results may support the notion that emotional abilities are subject to acquired knowledge, where situational (i.e., workplace-specific) emotional intelligence may depend on accumulating relevant experiences.

Music Making and Neuropsychological Aging: A Review

Aging is associated with a decline in social understanding and general cognition. Both are integral to wellbeing and rely on similar brain regions. Thus, as the population ages, there is a growing need for knowledge on the types of activities that maintain brain health in older adulthood. Active engagement in music making might be one such activity because it places a demand on brain networks tapping into multisensory integration, learning, reward, and cognition. It has been hypothesized that this demand may promote plasticity in the frontal and temporal lobes by taxing cognitive abilities and, hence, increase resistance to age-related neurodegeneration. We examine research relevant to this hypothesis and note that there is a lack of intervention studies with a well-matched control condition and random assignment. Thus, we discuss potential causal mechanisms underlying training-related neuropsychological changes, and provide suggestions for future research. It is argued that although music training might be a valuable tool for supporting healthy neuropsychological aging and mental wellbeing, well-controlled intervention studies are necessary to provide clear evidence.