Ability emotional intelligence: What about recognition of emotion in voices?

Interpersonal emotion recognition requires the integration of nonverbal cues across a number of modalities (e.g., face/voice), but the ‘gold-standard’ measure of ability emotional intelligence (AEI) in youth (MSCEIT-YVR) is limited to assessment of facial emotion recognition. Using indices from signal detection theory, the current study examined whether scores on the MSCEIT-YV were associated with accuracy and response thresholds for recognizing vocally expressed anger, disgust, fear, happiness and sadness. Data from 122 adolescents (57.38% female) ages 11-18 years (M = 15.39) showed that young people who scored high on the MSCEIT-YV were no more accurate in recognizing vocal emotions, raising questions about whether the measure needs to be re-designed to include emotion recognition across modalities. Those scoring high on certain subscales of the MSCEIT-YV were less likely to choose anger as a response label, suggesting vocal expression recognition is linked to more complex emotion perception abilities. Findings are interpreted with reference to the influence of social context and early cognitive processing of vocalizations, with a recommendation that researchers revisit the specific skills that comprise emotion recognition in AEI measurement tools.