Vocal Emotion Recognition in Group of Individuals with Normal Hearing, Sensorineural Hearing Loss and Auditory Dys-synchrony

Abstract

The study aimed to construct and compile the vocal emotion recognition battery in Kannada language and also to assess vocal emotion perception in group of individuals with normal hearing, sensori-neural hearing loss and auditory dys-synchrony. Using vocal emotion recognition battery in Kannada language 20 normal hearing ears (Group-A) and 10 ears of individuals with sensori-neural hearing loss(Group-B) and auditory dys-synchrony (Group-C) each were assessed. Comparison of performance across the three groups on vocal emotion perception recognition revealed that there was a significant difference across all the five emotions. Between Group-A and Group-B, there was significantly different seen across all the five emotions. Similar findings were also obtained between Group-A and Group-C. Whereas when the performance of Group-B and Group-C were compared, result revealed significant difference across all the emotions except the emotion ‘fear’. For the emotion ‘fear’ the perception was not significantly different between the Group-B and Group-C, which indicates that perception ability of the participants in both the groups were similar in perceiving ‘fear’, which could be because of the underlying acoustic parameters of the stimuli. The vocal emotion perception battery developed as a part of this study is a useful is assessing the vocal emotion perception abilities of individuals with normal hearing, sensori- neural hearing loss and auditory dys-synchrony/neuropathy.