Affective Priming Effect of Music on Emotional Prosody in Williams Syndrome

Abstract

Williams Syndrome (WS) is a rare neurodevelopmental disorder caused by a gene deletion on chromosome 7. Among a range of deficits, the areas for language and hearing are preserved. The present study examines whether emotional music influences the neural markers of emotional processing in spoken language. In addition, WS participants are compared to age-matched controls to test the hypothesis that their phenotype leads to larger musical priming. Using a cross-modal priming task, electroencephalograph (EEG) recorded participants as they listened to musical excerpts followed by spoken pseudowords. The emotions of the music either matched or mismatched the emotions of the pseudoword. Analysis of the electrophysiological data revealed an increased N400 component for mismatching conditions in both groups. Interesting differences were also found between the two groups, both in terms of latency of the mismatch effect and sensitivity to different types of emotion. Implications for language acquisition are also discussed.