Archive 1992–2014

The aim of study was to assess the ability to recognize affective prosody in sub-chronic and chronic schizophrenic patients as well as in healthy controls using two prosody measures: a Voiced Emotion Identification Task (judgement of positive and negative intonation of semantically neutral sentences) and Voiced Emotion Discrimination Task (discrimination of sentences containing either the same or different emotional intonation). Alt the participants were right-handers. Schizophrenic patients took part in the study after a four-week neuroleptic treatment. The structure and severity of schizophrenic symptomatology were assessed using the PANSS scale. Schizophrenic patients as compared to healthy controls were significantly impaired as regards perception of prosody (emotional intonation). Emotionally neutral intonation was perceived significantly better than either of the "emotional" categories. The least accurate perception was found as regards the emotion of "repulsion". Females turned out to perceive emotional tone of voice more accurately than did males. The emotional prosody deficit revealed its stable character, although it became more pronounced with the schizophrenic process duration.