Relations between social-perceptual ability in multi- and unisensory contexts, autonomic reactivity, and social functioning in individuals with Williams syndrome

Abstract

Compromised social-perceptual ability has been proposed to contribute to social dysfunction in neurodevelopmental disorders. While such impairments have been identified in Williams syndrome (WS), little is known about emotion processing in auditory and multisensory contexts. Employing a multidimensional approach, individuals with WS and typical development (TD) were tested for emotion identification across fearful, happy, and angry multisensory and unisensory face and voice stimuli. Autonomic responses were monitored in response to unimodal emotion. The WS group was administered an inventory of social functioning. Behaviorally, individuals with WS relative to TD demonstrated impaired processing of unimodal vocalizations and emotionally incongruent audiovisual compounds, reflecting a generalized deficit in social-auditory processing in WS. The TD group outperformed their counterparts with WS in identifying negative (fearful and angry) emotion, with similar between-group performance with happy stimuli. Mirroring this pattern, electrodermal activity (EDA) responses to the emotional content of the stimuli indicated that whereas those with WS showed the highest arousal to happy, and lowest arousal to fearful stimuli, the TD participants demonstrated the contrasting pattern. In WS, more normal social functioning was related to higher autonomic arousal to facial expressions. Implications for underlying neural architecture and emotional functions are discussed.

Extending the positive bias in Williams syndrome: The influence of biographical information on attention allocation

“…Future studies would benefit from an investigation of the neurological and physiological responses to the biographical face stimuli used here, to further our understanding of the WS positive bias. Such research would extend existing findings (Haas et al, 2009; Jarvinen et al, 2015) and would indicate whether the bias for positive biographical faces reported here at the attentional level is replicated at the neural level, via amygdala and frontal lobe dysfunction, and the physiological level, via a lack of habituation to biographically trustworthy faces. Similarly, future research exploring the attentional processes underlying the WS positive bias would benefit from the simultaneous measurement of eye movements while conducting a dot-probe task.…”

“…Using skin conductance response measures, Jarvinen et al (2015) found that WS individuals exhibited a lack of habituation for happy faces, relative to controls matched on chronological age. This finding was paired with decreased arousal for fearful faces in the WS group, relative to controls.…”

“…Alongside an intellectual impairment, typically in the mild to moderate range (Martens, Wilson, & Reutens, 2008), one of the cardinal features of WS is a unique social phenotype, with affected individuals displaying hypersocial behavior and a drive for social engagement and interaction, both with familiar others and with strangers (Bellugi, Adolphs, Cassady, & Chiles, 1999;Doyle, Bellugi, Korenberg, & Graham, 2004;Jones et al, 2000;Thurman & Fisher, 2015). In addition to this hypersociability, empirically, individuals with WS generally display a striking bias toward positive social stimuli, particularly happy facial expressions, which has been demonstrated across neurological (Haas et al, 2009;Haas & Reiss, 2012), physiological (Jarvinen et al, 2015;Plesa Skwerer et al, 2009), and attentional (Dodd & Porter, 2010;Goldman, Shulman, Bar-Haim, Abend, & Burack, 2017) measures. This strong positive bias is thought to at least partially underlie the heightened and indiscriminate social approach (Jarvinen, Korenberg, & Bellugi, 2013) and social trust (Riby, Kirk, Hanley, & Riby, 2014) reported in this population.…”

Overview of Social Cognitive Dysfunctions in Rare Developmental Syndromes With Psychiatric Phenotype

“…Abnormalities in auditory processing in WS seem to be restricted to the perception of negative affective vocalizations, such as scream or gasp ( 96 ). However, children with WS had no difficulty to recognize vocal emotions compared to controls ( 94 , 95 ). Emotional information can be transmitted via both visual (e.g., facial expressions and gestures) and auditory (e.g., affective prosody) channels.…”

Vestibular stimulation and primitive reflex integration may drive multisensory processing: putative principles for a Targeted sensorimotor therapy (TSMT)

“…Multisensory processing, a fundamental mechanism for disambiguating complex environmental signals [5], may contribute to a multitude of diseases and disorders if impaired. Previous reports have established compromised multisensory integration (MSI) in delayed motor development [2], moderately severe to severe cerebral palsy [6,7], intellectual disability [8,9], autism spectrum disorder [10,11], problems with attention including diagnosed attention de cit, hyperactivity disorder [12], sensory organ dysfunction [13], presence of sensory processing disorders [14]. Furthermore, as MSI has been implicated in language development [15,16] and learning disabilities e.g.…”