Alcohol and Alcoholism Advance Access originally published online on September 18, 2007
Alcohol and Alcoholism 2007 42(6):552-559; doi:10.1093/alcalc/agm134
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The crossmodal facilitation effect is disrupted in alcoholism: A study with emotional stimuli
1 Cognitive Neurosciences and Clinical Psychology Research units, Department of Psychology, Catholic University of Louvain, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium
2 Department of Psychiatry, Brugmann Hospital, Free University of Brussels, Belgium
3 Center of Research in Social Defense (CRDS). University of Mons-Hainaut, Mons, Belgium
* Author to whom correspondence should be addressed at: Université Catholique de Louvain, Faculté de Psychologie, Unité NESC, Place du Cardinal Mercier, 10, B-1348 Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium. Tel: (+32) 10 479245; Fax: (+32) 10 473774; E-mail: pierre.maurage{at}uclouvain.be
Received 7 April 2007; first review notified 25 June 2007; ; accepted 5 July 2007
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Abstract |
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Aims: Chronic alcoholism is classically associated with major deficits in the visual and auditory processing of emotions. However, the crossmodal (auditory-visual) processing of emotional stimuli, which occurs most frequently in everyday life, has not yet been explored. The aim of this study was to explore crossmodal processing in alcoholism, and specifically the auditory-visual facilitation effect. Methods: Twenty patients suffering from alcoholism, and 20 matched healthy controls had to detect the emotion (anger or happiness) displayed by auditory, visual or auditory-visual stimuli. The stimuli were designed to elicit a facilitation effect (namely, faster reaction times (RTs) for crossmodal condition than for unimodal ones). RTs and performance were recorded. Results: While the control subjects elicited a significant facilitation effect, alcoholic individuals did not present this effect, as no significant differences between RTs according to the modality were shown. This lack of facilitation effect is the marker of an impaired auditory-visual processing. Conclusions: Crossmodal processing of complex social stimuli (such as faces and voices) is crucial for interpersonal relations. This first evidence for a crossmodal deficit in alcoholism contribute in explaining the contrast observed between experimental results describing, up to now, mild impairments in emotional facial expression (EFE) recognition in alcoholic subjects (e.g. Oscar-Berman et al.,1990), and the many clinical observations suggesting massive problems.
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