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bioRxiv · 10.1101/2021.03.12.435099

Associations Between Vocal Emotion Recognition and Socio-emotional Adjustment in Children

Neves, L.·Martins, M.·Correia, A. I.·Castro, S. L.·Lima, C.
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Abstract

The human voice is a primary channel for emotional communication. It is often presumed that being able to recognise vocal emotions is important for everyday socio-emotional functioning, but direct empirical evidence for this remains scarce. Here, we examined relationships between vocal emotion recognition and socio-emotional adjustment in children. The sample included 6 to 8-year-old children (N = 141). The emotion tasks required them to categorise five emotions conveyed by nonverbal vocalisations (e.g., laughter, crying) and speech prosody: anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, plus neutrality. Socio-emotional adjustment was independently evaluated by the childrens teachers using a multi-dimensional questionnaire of self-regulation and social behaviour. Based on frequentist and Bayesian analyses, we found that higher emotion recognition in speech prosody related to better general socio-emotional adjustment. This association remained significant even after accounting for the childrens general cognitive ability, age, sex, and parental education in multiple regressions. Follow-up analyses indicated that the advantages were particularly robust for the socio-emotional dimensions prosocial behaviour and cognitive and behavioural self-regulation. For emotion recognition in nonverbal vocalisations, no associations with socio-emotional adjustment were found. Overall, these results support the close link between childrens emotional prosody recognition skills and their everyday social behaviour.

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Neves, L., Martins, M., Correia, A. I., Castro, S. L., Lima, C.. 2021-03-12. Associations Between Vocal Emotion Recognition and Socio-emotional Adjustment in Children. https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.03.12.435099

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