Disturbances of affective prosody in patients with schizophrenia; a cross sectional study

The objective was to determine whether disturbances of affective prosody constitute part of the symptomatology of schizophrenia. Affective prosody is defined here as a neuropsychological function that encompasses all non-verbal aspects of language that are necessary for recognising and conveying emotions in communication. Twenty six schizophrenic outpatients and twenty four normal controls underwent a standardised prosody test, assessing four different aspects of affective prosody: spontaneous prosody, prosodic recognition, prosodic repetition, and facial affect recognition. Patients scored significantly worse than controls on three of the four subtests: spontaneous prosody, prosodic recognition, and prosodic repetition. There were no significant differences on a subtest for facial affect recognition. Differences in educational level between patients and controls could not account for these differences.