Esta pesquisa teve como objetivo realizar uma análise da entoação de voz de pacientes com esquizofrenia para, a partir dessas variantes linguísticas examinar dados que caracterizem a prosódia como um possível indicativo diagnóstico. A esquizofrenia é uma doença mental grave sem sintomas patognomônicos, caracterizada por um misto de sinais e sintomas disformes. A prosódia afetiva é definida como o processamento e o reconhecimento de elementos emocionais e afetivos provindos das informações da entoação vocal. Pesquisas realizadas anteriormente apontam déficits singulares na verbalização das emoções contidas na fala desses pacientes, o seu discurso é considerado vago, com poucos ou quase nulos sinais emocionais entoacionais. Para a realização desta pesquisa, inicialmente, 16 clientes e frequentadores do Museu de Imagens do Inconsciente, uma das alas do hospital psiquiátrico Instituto Nise da Silveira (SEIs) e mais 16 pessoas sem transtorno mental que compuseram um grupo de controle (SCs), tiveram sua voz gravada em quatro etapas: entrevista de anamnese que segue um roteiro semiestruturado; relato empírico de experiências felizes e tristes; descrição de seus trabalhos artísticos; por fim, a leitura de um trecho de uma história infantil sem conotação afetiva. Na sequência, os mesmos procedimentos foram aplicados em usuários do CAPS II Espaço Vivo, um dos serviços de saúde mental que compõe o Centro de Atenção Integral à Saúde (CAIS) Prof. Cantídio Moura de Campos. A análise dos dados coletados foi possibilitada pela rotina ExProsodia (FERREIRA-NETTO, 2006, 2008, 2010, 2016), aplicativo elaborado para examinar automaticamente os elementos constituintes da prosódia. Através desses procedimentos foi possível identificar que houveram diferenças significativas nas variáveis acústicas da assimetria e dispersão do Tom Médio e da frequência fundamental (F0) nas etapas de fala espontânea e na leitura narrativa. Em especial, nessa última etapa, destaca-se o comportamento adverso da curtose de foco/ênfase que possibilitou a individualização dos grupos. Por fim, este trabalho de cunho quantitativo exploratório, corrobora a perspectiva de diferenciar pessoas acometidas pela esquizofrenia de sujeitos sem histórico anterior de transtornos psíquicos baseado na análise de parâmetros acústicos de voz. Em suma, tais apontamentos poderiam indicar pistas salutares para a constituição de um diagnóstico mais acurado para a esquizofrenia, assim como podem ser propriedades relevantes para colaborar para organização do tratamento individual. / This research aimed to perform an analysis of the patients voice intonation with schizophrenia to examine the data that characterize prosody as a possible diagnostic indication. Schizophrenia is a serious mental illness with no pathognomonic symptoms, characterized by a mix of misshapen signs and symptoms. The affective prosody is defined as the processing and recognition of emotional and affective elements from voice of the intonation. Previous studies point to singular deficits in the verbalization of the emotions contained in the speech of these patients, their discourse is considered vague, with few or almost no intonational emotional signals. In order to carry out this research, initially, 16 clients and visitors of the \"Museu de Imagens do Inconsciente\", one of the departament of the psychiatric hospital \"Instituto Nise da Silveira\" (SEIs) and 16 people without mental disorder who composed a control group (SCs) had their voice recorded in four stages: anamnesis interview that follows a semi-structured script; empirical report of happy and sad experiences; description of your artwork; finally, the reading of an excerpt from a children\'s story without affective connotation. Subsequently, the same procedures were applied to users of the \"CAPS II Espaço Vivo\", one of the mental health services that make up the \"Centro de Atenção Integral à Saúde (CAIS) Prof. Cantídio Moura de Campos \". The analysis of the collected data was made possible by the routine ExProsodia (FERREIRA-NETTO, 2006, 2008, 2010, 2016), an application designed to automatically examine the constituent elements of prosody. Through these procedures it was possible to identify that there were significant differences in the acoustic variables of the asymmetry and dispersion of both the Middle Tone and the fundamental frequency (F0) in the stages of spontaneous speech and narrative reading. In this last stage, we highlight the adverse behavior of the focus / emphasis kurtosis that allowed the individualization of the groups. Finally, this quantitative exploratory study corroborates the perspective of differentiating people affected by schizophrenia from subjects without previous history of psychic disorders based on the analysis of acoustic parameters of voice. In short, such notes could indicate salutary clues for the constitution of a more accurate diagnosis for schizophrenia, as well as they may be relevant properties to collaborate for the organization of individual treatment.

Real-world perception of emotion results from the integration of multiple cues, most notably facial expression and affective prosody. The use of incongruent emotional stimuli presents an opportunity to study the interaction between sensory modalities. Thirty-seven participants were exposed to audio-visual stimuli (Robins & Schultz, 2004) including angry, fearful, happy, and neutral presentations. Eighty stimuli contain matching emotions and 240 contain incongruent emotional cues. Matching emotions elicited a significant number of correct responses for all four emotions. Sign tests indicated that for most incongruent conditions, participants demonstrated a bias towards the visual modality. Despite these findings, specific incongruent conditions did show evidence of blending. Future research should explore an evolutionary model of facial expression as a means for behavioral adaptation and the possibility of an “emotional McGurk effect” in particular combinations of emotions.

no / The majority of studies have demonstrated a right hemisphere (RH) advantage for the perception of emotions. Other studies have found that the involvement of each hemisphere is valence specific, with the RH better at perceiving negative emotions and the LH better at perceiving positive emotions [Reuter-Lorenz, P., & Davidson, R.J. (1981) Differential contributions of the 2 cerebral hemispheres to the perception of happy and sad faces.Neuropsychologia, 19, 609¿613]. To account for valence laterality effects in emotion perception we propose an `expectancy¿ hypothesis which suggests that valence effects are obtained when the top-down expectancy to perceive an emotion outweighs the strength of bottom-up perceptual information enabling the discrimination of an emotion. A dichotic listening task was used to examine alternative explanations of valence effects in emotion perception. Emotional sentences (spoken in a happy or sad tone of voice), and morphed-happy and morphed-sad sentences (which blended a neutral version of the sentence with the pitch of the emotion sentence) were paired with neutral versions of each sentence and presented dichotically. A control condition was also used, consisting of two identical neutral sentences presented dichotically, with one channel arriving before the other by 7 ms. In support of the RH hypothesis there was a left ear advantage for the perception of sad and happy emotional sentences. However, morphed sentences showed no ear advantage, suggesting that the RH is specialised for the perception of genuine emotions and that a laterality effect may be a useful tool for the detection of fake emotion. Finally, for the control condition we obtained an interaction between the expected emotion and the effect of ear lead. Participants tended to select the ear that received the sentence first, when they expected a `sad¿ sentence, but not when they expected a `happy¿ sentence. The results are discussed in relation to the different theoretical explanations of valence laterality effects in emotion perception.