Recognition and evaluation of emotional prosody in individuals with generalized social phobia: a pilot study
Abstract
Studies using facial emotional expressions as stimuli partially support the assumption of biased processing of social signals in social phobia. This pilot study explored for the first time whether individuals with social phobia display a processing bias towards emotional prosody. Fifteen individuals with generalized social phobia and fifteen healthy controls (HC) matched for gender, age, and education completed a recognition test consisting of meaningless utterances spoken in a neutral, angry, sad, fearful, disgusted or happy tone of voice. Participants also evaluated the stimuli with regard to valence and arousal. While these ratings did not differ significantly between groups, analysis of the recognition test revealed enhanced identification of sad and fearful voices and decreased identification of happy voices in individuals with social phobia compared with HC. The two groups did not differ in their processing of neutral, disgust, and anger prosody.
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In social anxiety, a negative interpretation bias exists for facial and vocal expressions.
“a negative interpretation bias for facial [7] and vocal [8] expressions”
From They are laughing at me: Cerebral mediation of cognitive biases in social anxiety (2014) · cites this paper as [8]
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- Authors
- Quadflieg, S., Wendt, B., Mohr, A., Miltner, W. H. R., & Straube, T.
- Affiliations
- Leibniz Institute for Neurobiology (DE)
- Friedrich Schiller University Jena (DE)
- Corresponding author
- Straube, Thomas
- Venue
- Behaviour Research and Therapy
- Publisher
- Elsevier BV
- Published
- 2007-12
- Volume
- 45
- Issue
- 12
- Pages
- 3096-3103
- ISSN
- 0005-7967 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W2033446788
- Cited by
- 48
- References
- 32
- Citations by year
- 2026: 1 · 2025: 2 · 2024: 1 · 2023: 3 · 2022: 1 · 2021: 4 · 2020: 2 · 2019: 1 · 2018: 1 · 2017: 4 · 2016: 2 · 2015: 4 · 2014: 7 · 2013: 4 · 2012: 2
- FWCI
- 3.00
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Behaviour Research and Therapy (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Bristol Research (University of Bristol) (publishedVersion)
- Funders
- Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena
- Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Experimental and Cognitive Psychology › Anxiety, Depression, Psychometrics, Treatment, Cognitive Processes
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Clinical Psychology › Child and Adolescent Psychosocial and Emotional Development
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Psychiatry and Mental health › Schizophrenia research and treatment
- Keywords
- generalized social phobia, emotional prosody, voice emotion recognition, emotional valence, emotional arousal, emotional facial expressions
- MeSH terms
- Adult, Arousal, Emotions, Female, Germany, Humans, Male, Phobic Disorders, Pilot Projects, Social Perception, Speech, Verbal Behavior, Case-Control Studies, Recognition, Psychology
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