Key result
Elevated blood pressure is linked to ~26% lower accuracy in implicit auditory emotion recognition.
Why the study?
While emotional dampening in facial emotion recognition is documented in prehypertension and hypertension, auditory and audiovisual emotion recognition in these groups had not been explored.
Cross-Sectional (n=175)
No
Absolute Event Rate: 46.22% vs 62.43%
p-value: p=0.009
Individuals with prehypertension and hypertension exhibit emotional dampening, characterized by impaired implicit auditory and cross-modal emotion recognition compared to normotensives.
Association between elevated BP and impaired implicit emotion recognition warrants no practice change; leaves open causal links and clinical relevance.
Research shows a reduced responsivity to implicit as well as explicit facial emotion recognition (emotional dampening) in prehypertensives and hypertensives. This study explored auditory and audiovisual emotion recognition in prehypertensives and hypertensives. Participants (N = 175) who were normotensives, prehypertensives, and hypertensives (n = 57, 58, and 60, respectively) completed an auditory implicit task (matching auditory target with auditory distractors) and two cross-modal implicit tasks (matching visual target with auditory distractors, and vice-versa), and an auditory explicit task (labelling emotions in audio-clips). Findings showed an aberrant speed-accuracy trade-off, where prehypertensives focused more on accuracy at the cost of speed while hypertensives showed the opposite. Discriminant function analysis revealed that blood pressure (BP)-associated emotional dampening is a highly specific but moderately sensitive correlate of hypertension. Our study highlights that prehypertensives and hypertensives demonstrate emotional dampening in implicit (but not explicit) auditory emotion recognition and a greater deficit for auditory than visual recognition of implicit emotions. Findings show emotional dampening as an observable correlate of elevated BP and hypertension.
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Shukla et al. (2023) conducted a cross-sectional in Hypertension and Prehypertension (n=175). Elevated blood pressure (prehypertension and hypertension) vs. Normotension was evaluated on Accuracy of emotion recognition on auditory implicit task (p=0.009). Elevated blood pressure (prehypertension and hypertension) was associated with significantly impaired implicit auditory emotion recognition compared to normotension.
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