Comprehensive Affect Testing System (CATS)
FREE for use with an Inquisit Lab or Inquisit Web license.Background
The Comprehensive Affective Testing System (CATS) is a standardized, cross‐culturally valid neuropsychological assessment task battery to measure how well people process emotions from faces (facial expressions), voices (prosody) and lexical information and was originally developed by Paul Ekman and colleagues in 2006. An abbreviated form (CATS-A) was published in 2009. The complete battery provides 13 subtests that cover various stages of emotion processing such as the ability to discriminate between different faces, matching facial expressions to emotions such as sadness, anger and happiness, and matching facial expressions to different voices.
Task Procedure
For each subtest the participant receives visual and verbal task instructions before working on 6-23 individual task trials. Each individual trial presents one question to the participant and presents either text, images, and/or soundfiles. Soundfiles can be repeated as many times as needed. The participant is then asked to select the response button that best answers the question. Responses can be changed until a 'Next' button is pressed to move on to the next trial. There is no time limit and participant does not receive feedback.
What it Measures
The CATS Testing Battery is a general assessment tool of emotion processing.
Psychological domains
- Emotion Processing: The perception, interpretation and responding to emotional stimuli
- Visual-Facial Processing: The processing of facial expressions
- Auditory-Prosodic Emotion Processing: Emotion processing of auditory information
- Cross-Modal/Integrative Emotion Processing: Ability to integrate visual and auditory emotion related information
Main Performance Metrics
- Number of correct responses
Psychiatric Conditions
Emotion Processing tends to be affected in patients with the following conditions
- Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI)
- Stroke
- Autism Spectrum Disorder
- Dementia
- Depression
- Bipolar Disorder
- Schizophrenia
Available Test Variations
A battery of 13 subtests measuring different aspects of emotional cognition and processing by Froming et al (2006).
Participants decide whether two presented faces are the same people
Participants decide whether two presented faces show the same emotion.
Participants decide whether two spoken statements sound the same.
Participants decide whether the emotions in two spoken statements are the same.
Participants are presented one face at a time (6 altogether) and have to identify the emotion of the face.
Participants are presented with 12 spoken sentences and have to categorize the expressed emotion.
Participants are select which of 5 faces matches the affect of a target face.
Participants are select which of 5 faces matches the affect of a stated emotion.
Participants listen to 12 sentences spoken in a happy, sad or neutral voice and must identify the emotion of the voice while ignoring the meaning of the sentence.
Participants listen to 12 sentences spoken in a happy, sad or neutral voice and have to identify the affective meaning of the sentence content ignoring the emotional tone of the voice.
Participants are asked to select the facial expression (5 choices) that reflects the emotion of a person reading a neutral sentence.
Participants decide which of 3 sentences read in an emotional tone corresponds to the emotional expression of a given face.
Participants see 3 faces and decide which two depict the same emotion.
The polish version runs 3 subtests of the CATS-R (subtest1, subtest2, subtest8)
References
Search Google Scholar for peer-reviewed, published research using the Inquisit Comprehensive Affect Testing System (CATS).
Froming, K.B., Gregory, A., Levy, C.M., & Ekman, P. (2006). The Comprehensive Affective Testing System. User’s Manual. Gainesville, FL: Psychology Software Tools, Inc.
Ventura, Maria I, Baynes, Kathleen, Sigvardt, Karen A, Unruh, April M, Acklin, Sarah S, Kirsch, Heidi E, & Disbrow, Elizabeth A. (2012). Hemispheric asymmetries and prosodic emotion recognition deficits in Parkinson's disease. Neuropsychologia, 50(8), 1936-1945.
Brand, Jesse G, Mindt, Monica Rivera, Schaffer, Sarah G, Alper, Kenneth R, Devinsky, Orrin, & Barr, William B. (2012). Emotion processing bias and age of seizure onset among epilepsy patients with depressive symptoms. Epilepsy & Behavior, 25(4), 552-557.
Hulka, Lea M, Preller, Katrin H, Vonmoos, Matthias, Broicher, Sarah D, & Quednow, Boris B. (2013). Cocaine users manifest impaired prosodic and cross-modal emotion processing. Frontiers in Psychiatry, 4, 98.
Albuquerque, Luisa, Coelho, Miguel, Martins, Maurício, Guedes, Leonor Correia, Rosa, Mário M, Ferreira, Joaquim J, . . . Martins, Isabel Pavão. (2013). STN-DBS does not change emotion recognition in advanced Parkinson's disease. Parkinsonism & Related Disorders, 20(2), 166-169.
Rossell, Susan L, Van Rheenen, Tamsyn E, Groot, Christopher, Gogos, Andrea, O’Regan, Alison, & Joshua, Nicole R. (2013). Investigating affective prosody in psychosis: A study using the Comprehensive Affective Testing System. Psychiatry Research, 210(3), 896-900.
Hoertnagl, Christine M, Biedermann, Falko, Yalcin-Siedentopf, Nursen, Muehlbacher, Moritz, Rauch, Anna-Sophia, Baumgartner, Susanne, . . . Hofer, Alex. (2015). Prosodic and semantic affect perception in remitted patients with bipolar I disorder. The Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, 76(6), E779-E786.
Albuquerque, Luisa, Martins, Maurício, Coelho, Miguel, Guedes, Leonor, Ferreira, Joaquim J, Rosa, Mário, & Martins, Isabel Pavão. (2016). Advanced Parkinson disease patients have impairment in prosody processing. Journal of Clinical and Experimental Neuropsychology, 38(2), 208-216.
Andrews, Sophie C, Staios, Mathew, Howe, Jim, Reardon, Katrina, & Fisher, Fiona. (2017). Multimodal Emotion Processing Deficits Are Present in Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis. Neuropsychology, 31(3), 304-310.