The Difference in the Understanding of the Emotional Information in Women and Men with Alzheimer's Disease

One of the research topics that influenced by gender differences is the issue of emotion production and perception. Numerous studies have shown that women and men differ in their perception of facial expressions, watching movies, listening to music, and ultimately understanding emotional prosody, or how women and men produce their emotions in contextual situations. The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of emotional prosody as a non-verbal communication tool against emotional lexical content on the elderly over 65 years (as a control group) and Alzheimer's patients in mild to moderate levels separately for men and women. In the group of Alzheimer's patients (n = 12), in the emotion of anger and fear, women were perceived more than men this emotion with emotional prosody, but in the emotions of happiness, sadness and disgust, men used more emotional prosody and women unlike, used more lexical content to understand these emotions. While in the control group (12 people), women used the lexical content to understand all the emotions and emotional prosody had no effect on the comprehension. In the emotion of sadness, both men and women used only lexical content in comprehension, and emotional prosody was ineffective. Men used emotional prosody in disgust more than just other emotions, but the lexical content was more effective in understanding other emotions. Therefore, men and women react differently depending on the type of emotion, and this difference depends on biological factors as well as relationships and social skills of individuals. Because by experiencing and evaluating life events, different emotions are perceived.