ERP Evidence of a Stroop-Like Effect in Emotional Speech Related to Social Anhedonia

The present study investigated the ERP correlates of the integration of emotional prosody to the emotional meaning of a spoken word. Thirty-four nonclinical participants listened to negative and positive words that were spoken with an angry or happy prosody and classified the emotional valence of the word meaning while ignoring emotional prosody. Social anhedonia was also self-rated by the subjects. Compared to congruent trials, incongruent ones elicited slower and less accurate behavioral responses, and a smaller P300 component at the brain response level. The present data suggest that vocal emotional information is salient enough to be integrated early in verbal processing. The P300 amplitude modulation by the prosody-meaning congruency positively correlated with the social anhedonia score, suggesting that the sensitivity of the electrical brain response to emotional prosody increased with social anhedonia. Interpretations of this result in terms of emotional processing in social anhedonia are discussed.