There is compelling evidence that semantic memory is involved in emotion recognition. However, its contribution to the recognition of emotional valence and basic emotions remains unclear. We compared the performance of 10 participants with the semantic variant of primary progressive aphasia (svPPA), a clinical model of semantic memory impairment, to that of 33 healthy participants using three experimental tasks assessing the recognition of: 1) emotional valence conveyed by photographic scenes, 2) basic emotions conveyed by facial expressions, and 3) basic emotions conveyed by prosody sounds. Individuals with svPPA showed significant deficits in the recognition of emotional valence and basic emotions (except happiness and surprise conveyed by facial expressions). However, the performance of the two groups was comparable when the performance on tests assessing semantic memory was added as a covariate in the analyses. Altogether, these results suggest that semantic memory contributes to the recognition of emotional valence and basic emotions. By examining the recognition of emotional valence and basic emotions in individuals with selective semantic memory loss, our results contribute to the refinement of current theories on the role of semantic memory in emotion recognition.

有令人信服的证据表明，语义记忆与情绪识别有关。但是，其对于识别情绪价和基本情绪的贡献尚不清楚。我们使用三个实验任务评估了对以下方面的识别，比较了具有语义记忆障碍临床模型的原发进行性失语（svPPA）语义变体的10位参与者的表现与33位健康参与者的表现： ，2）表情表达的基本情感和3）韵律音表达的基本情感。患有svPPA的人在情绪价和基本情绪的识别上表现出明显的缺陷（面部表情所传达的幸福和惊喜除外）。然而，分析中的协变量。总之，这些结果表明语义记忆有助于识别情绪价和基本情绪。通过检查具有选择性语义记忆丧失的个体对情绪价和基本情绪的识别，我们的结果有助于改进当前关于语义记忆在情绪识别中作用的理论。