How do depressed and healthy adults interpret nuanced facial expressions?

This study investigates the discrimination accuracy of emotional stimuli in subjects with major depression compared with healthy controls using photographs of facial expressions of varying emotional intensities. The sample included 88 unmedicated male and female subjects, aged 18-56 years, with major depressive disorder (n = 44) or no psychiatric illness (n = 44), who judged the emotion of 200 facial pictures displaying an expression between 10% (90% neutral) and 80% (nuanced) emotion. Stimuli were presented in 10% increments to generate a range of intensities, each presented for a 500-ms duration. Compared with healthy volunteers, depressed subjects showed very good recognition accuracy for sad faces but impaired recognition accuracy for other emotions (e.g., harsh, surprise, and sad expressions) of subtle emotional intensity. Recognition accuracy improved for both groups as a function of increased intensity on all emotions. Finally, as depressive symptoms increased, recognition accuracy increased for sad faces, but decreased for surprised faces. Moreover, depressed subjects showed an impaired ability to accurately identify subtle facial expressions, indicating that depressive symptoms influence accuracy of emotional recognition.     

Impaired Fear Recognition and Social Anxiety Symptoms in Adolescence

This study represents the first examination of adolescent anxiety in relation to peer emotion recognition, rather than adult emotion recognition. Additionally, we examine potential mechanisms for the development of social anxiety in females. Facial emotion recognition (FER) is important for accurate social cognition, which is impaired in individuals with various disorders, including anxiety disorders. Social anxiety often onsets during adolescence, is observed more commonly in females, and is often associated with FER difficulties. Given the importance of peer interaction during adolescence, and some evidence that FER may differ as a function of the stimuli (adolescent or adult faces), we sought to study FER in relation to social anxiety symptoms using stimuli portraying adolescent faces. Male and female adolescents (N = 64) completed an online survey in which they rated 257 child and adolescent emotional faces and completed a self-report measure of social anxiety symptoms. We examined differences in emotion recognition (e.g., fear, anger, sadness) between individuals with high and low levels of social anxiety symptoms. Adolescents with high social anxiety symptoms were more likely to have problems correctly identifying fearful expressions (90.55 % accuracy) compared to adolescents with low social anxiety symptoms (96.00 % accuracy; t = 2.375, p = .021, d = 0.594), and this effect was observed exclusively in female adolescents. The observed sex difference in accurate identification of fearful faces in relation to social anxiety could suggest a potential mechanism for social anxiety development in adolescent females.     

Understanding associations between negatively biased attention and depression and social anxiety: positively biased attention is key

ABSTRACT

Background and objectives: Although research supports the premise that depressed and socially anxious individuals direct attention preferentially toward negative emotional cues, little is known about how attention to positive emotional cues might modulate this negative attention bias risk process. The purpose of this study was to determine if associations between attention biases to sad and angry faces and depression and social anxiety symptoms, respectively, would be strongest in individuals who also show biased attention away from happy faces.

Methods: Young adults (N?=?151; 79% female; M?=?19.63 years) completed self-report measures of depression and social anxiety symptoms and a dot probe task to assess attention biases to happy, sad, and angry facial expressions.

Results: Attention bias to happy faces moderated associations between attention to negatively valenced faces and psychopathology symptoms. However, attention bias toward sad faces was positively and significantly related to depression symptoms only for individuals who also selectively attended toward happy faces. Similarly, attention bias toward angry faces was positively and significantly associated with social anxiety symptoms only for individuals who also selectively attended toward happy faces.

Conclusions: These findings suggest that individuals with high levels of depression or social anxiety symptoms attend preferentially to emotional stimuli across valences.     

Liberal bias mediates emotion recognition deficits in frontal traumatic brain injury

It is well-known that patients having sustained frontal-lobe traumatic brain injury (TBI) are severely impaired on tests of emotion recognition. Indeed, these patients have significant difficulty recognizing facial expressions of emotion, and such deficits are often associated with decreased social functioning and poor quality of life. As of yet, no studies have examined the response patterns which underlie facial emotion recognition impairment in TBI and which may lend clarity to the interpretation of deficits. Therefore, the present study aimed to characterize response patterns in facial emotion recognition in 14 patients with frontal TBI compared to 22 matched control subjects, using a task which required participants to rate the intensity of each emotion (happiness, sadness, anger, disgust, surprise and fear) of a series of photographs of emotional and neutral faces. Results first confirmed the presence of facial emotion recognition impairment in TBI, and further revealed that patients displayed a liberal bias when rating facial expressions, leading them to associate intense ratings of incorrect emotional labels to sad, disgusted, surprised and fearful facial expressions. These findings are generally in line with prior studies which also report important facial affect recognition deficits in TBI patients, particularly for negative emotions.     

The relationship between history of violent and criminal behavior and recognition of facial expression of emotions in men with schizophrenia and schizoaffective disorder

Social psychological research underscores the relation between aggression and emotion. Specifically, regulating negative affect requires the ability to appraise restraint‐producing cues, such as facial signs of anger, fear and other emotions. Individuals diagnosed with major mental disorders are more likely to have engaged in violent behavior than mentally healthy members of the same communities. We examined whether violent and criminal behavior in men with schizophrenia is related to emotion recognition abilities. Forty‐one men with schizophrenia underwent a computerized emotion discrimination test presenting mild and extreme intensities of happy, sad, angry, fearful and neutral faces, balanced for gender and ethnicity. History of violence was assessed by the Life History of Aggression Scale and official records of arrests. Psychopathology was rated using the Positive and Negative Symptom Scale. Criminal behavior was associated with poor emotion recognition, especially for fearful and angry facial expressions. History of aggression was also associated with more severe positive symptoms and less severe negative symptoms. These findings suggest that misinterpretation of social cues such as angry and fearful expression may lead to a failure in socialization and adaptive behavior in response to emotional situation, which may result in a higher number of criminal arrests. Aggr. Behav. 32:1–8, 2006. © 2006 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.     

Heightened sensitivity to emotional expressions in generalised anxiety disorder,compared to social anxiety disorder,and controls

Few studies have examined potential differences between social anxiety disorder (SAD) and generalised anxiety disorder (GAD) in the sensitivity to detect emotional expressions. The present study aims to compare the detection of emotional expressions in SAD and GAD. Participants with a primary diagnosis of GAD (n?=?46), SAD (n?=?70), and controls (n?=?118) completed a morph movies task. The task presented faces expressing increasing degrees of emotional intensity, slowly changing from a neutral to a full-intensity happy, sad, or angry expressions. Participants used a slide bar to view the movie frames from left to right, and to stop at the first frame where they perceived an emotion. The frame selected thus indicated the intensity of emotion required to identify the facial expression. Participants with GAD detected the onset of facial emotions at lower intensity of emotion than participants with SAD (p?=?0.002) and controls (p?=?0.039). In a multiple regression analysis controlling for age, race, and depressive symptom severity, lower frame at which the emotion was detected was independently associated and GAD diagnosis (B?=?–5.73, SE?=?1.74, p?相似文献   

The effects of facial expressions and tears on the speed of sex recognition

The goal of this research was to examine the effects of facial expressions on the speed of sex recognition. Prior research revealed that sex recognition of female angry faces was slower compared with male angry faces and that female happy faces are recognized faster than male happy faces. We aimed to replicate and extend the previous research by using different set of facial stimuli, different methodological approach and also by examining the effects of some other previously unexplored expressions (such as crying) on the speed of sex recognition. In the first experiment, we presented facial stimuli of men and women displaying anger, fear, happiness, sadness, crying and three control conditions expressing no emotion. Results showed that sex recognition of angry females was significantly slower compared with sex recognition in any other condition, while sad, crying, happy, frightened and neutral expressions did not impact the speed of sex recognition. In the second experiment, we presented angry, neutral and crying expressions in blocks and again only sex recognition of female angry expressions was slower compared with all other expressions. The results are discussed in a context of perceptive features of male and female facial configuration, evolutionary theory and social learning context.     

Mood effects on emotion recognition

Mood affects memory and social judgments. However, findings are inconsistent with regard to how mood affects emotion recognition: For sad moods, general performance decrements in emotion recognition have been reported, as well as an emotion specific bias, such as better recognition of sad facial expressions compared to happy expressions (negative bias). Far less research has been conducted on the influence of happy moods on emotion recognition. We primed 93 participants with happy, sad, or neutral moods and had them perform an emotion recognition task. Results showed a negative bias for participants in sad moods and a positive bias for participants in happy moods. Sad and happy moods hampered the recognition of mood-incongruent expressions; the recognition of mood-congruent expressions was not affected by moods.     

Recognition of emotion from inverted schematic drawings of faces

The present study investigated whether facial expressions of emotion are recognized holistically, i.e., all at once as an entire unit, as faces are or featurally as other nonface stimuli. Evidence for holistic processing of faces comes from a reliable decrement in recognition performance when faces are presented inverted rather than upright. If emotion is recognized holistically, then recognition of facial expressions of emotion should be impaired by inversion. To test this, participants were shown schematic drawings of faces showing one of six emotions (surprise, sadness, anger, happiness, disgust, and fear) in either an upright or inverted orientation and were asked to indicate the emotion depicted. Participants were more accurate in the upright than in the inverted orientation, providing evidence in support of holistic recognition of facial emotion. Because recognition of facial expressions of emotion is important in social relationships, this research may have implications for treatment of some social disorders.     

Facial emotion recognition in violent men

The goal of this study was to explore the ability of violent men to recognise facial affect. In contrast to traditional approaches to this research question, we took the effects of the models' sex and different types of violent behaviour into consideration. Data obtained from 71 violent men revealed that they recognised facial expressions of fear (p = .019) and disgust (p = .013) more accurately when displayed by female than male models. The opposite was found for angry faces (p = .006), while the models' sex did not affect the recognition of sad, happy and surprised facial expressions or neutral faces. Furthermore, sexual coercion perpetrators were more accurate than other violent men in the recognition of female facial disgust (p = .006). These results are discussed in the context of social learning theory, and the hypothesis that female facial expressions of disgust could be subtle cues to their sexual infidelity that motivate sexual coercion in some men.     

Identity recognition and happy and sad facial expression recall: influence of depressive symptoms

Relatively few studies have examined memory bias for social stimuli in depression or dysphoria. The aim of this study was to investigate the influence of depressive symptoms on memory for facial information. A total of 234 participants completed the Beck Depression Inventory II and a task examining memory for facial identity and expression of happy and sad faces. For both facial identity and expression, the recollective experience was measured with the Remember/Know/Guess procedure (Gardiner & Richardson-Klavehn, 2000). The results show no major association between depressive symptoms and memory for identities. However, dysphoric individuals consciously recalled (Remember responses) more sad facial expressions than non-dysphoric individuals. These findings suggest that sad facial expressions led to more elaborate encoding, and thereby better recollection, in dysphoric individuals.     

Characterization of facial emotion recognition in bipolar disorder: Focus on emotion mislabelling and neutral expressions

Increasing evidence suggests that facial emotion recognition is impaired in bipolar disorder (BD). However, patient–control differences are small owing to ceiling effects on the tasks used to assess them. The extant literature is also limited by a relative absence of attention towards identifying patterns of emotion misattribution or understanding whether neutral faces are mislabelled in the same way as ones displaying emotion. We addressed these limitations by comparing facial emotion recognition performance in BD patients and healthy controls on a novel and challenging task. Thirty-four outpatients with BD I and 32 demographically matched healthy controls completed a facial emotion recognition task requiring the labelling of neutral and emotive faces displayed at low emotional intensities. Results indicated that BD patients were significantly less accurate at labelling faces than healthy controls, particularly if they displayed fear or neutral expressions. There were no between-group differences in response times or patterns of emotion mislabelling, with both groups confusing sad and neutral faces, although BD patients also mislabelled sad faces as angry. Task performance did not significantly correlate with mood symptom severity in the BD group. These findings suggest that facial emotion recognition impairments in BD extend to neutral face recognition. Emotion misattribution occurs in a similar, albeit exaggerated manner in patients with BD compared to healthy controls. Future behavioural and neuroimaging research should reconsider the use of neutral faces as baseline stimuli in their task designs.     

Theory of mind and attentional bias to facial emotional expressions: A preliminary study

Ribeiro, L. A. & Fearon, P. (2010). Theory of mind and attentional bias to facial emotional expressions: A preliminary study. Scandinavian Journal of Psychology. Theory of mind ability has been associated with performance in interpersonal interactions and has been found to influence aspects such as emotion recognition, social competence, and social anxiety. Being able to attribute mental states to others requires attention to subtle communication cues such as facial emotional expressions. Decoding and interpreting emotions expressed by the face, especially those with negative valence, are essential skills to successful social interaction. The current study explored the association between theory of mind skills and attentional bias to facial emotional expressions. According to the study hypothesis, individuals with poor theory of mind skills showed preferential attention to negative faces over both non‐negative faces and neutral objects. Tentative explanations for the findings are offered emphasizing the potential adaptive role of vigilance for threat as a way of allocating a limited capacity to interpret others’ mental states to obtain as much information as possible about potential danger in the social environment.     

Identity recognition and happy and sad facial expression recall: Influence of depressive symptoms

Relatively few studies have examined memory bias for social stimuli in depression or dysphoria. The aim of this study was to investigate the influence of depressive symptoms on memory for facial information. A total of 234 participants completed the Beck Depression Inventory II and a task examining memory for facial identity and expression of happy and sad faces. For both facial identity and expression, the recollective experience was measured with the Remember/Know/Guess procedure (Gardiner & Richardson-Klavehn, 2000). The results show no major association between depressive symptoms and memory for identities. However, dysphoric individuals consciously recalled (Remember responses) more sad facial expressions than non-dysphoric individuals. These findings suggest that sad facial expressions led to more elaborate encoding, and thereby better recollection, in dysphoric individuals.     

Psychopathy and Identification of Facial Expressions of Emotion

The authors examined the association between psychopathy and identification of facial expressions of emotion. Previous research in this area is scant and has produced contradictory findings (Blair et. al., 2001, 2004; Glass & Newman, 2006; Kosson et al., 2002). One hundred and forty-five male jail inmates, rated using the Hare Psychopathy Checklist: Screening Version participated in a facial affect recognition task. Participants were shown faces containing one of five emotions (happiness, sadness, fear, anger, or shame) displayed at one of two different levels of intensity of expression (100% or 60%). The authors predicted that psychopathy would be associated with decreased affect recognition, particularly for sad and fearful emotional expressions, and decreased recognition of less intense displays of facial affect. Results were largely consistent with expectations in that psychopathy was negatively correlated with overall facial recognition of affect, sad facial affect, and recognition of less intense displays of affect. An unexpected negative correlation with recognition of happy facial affect was also found. These results suggest that psychopathy may be associated with a general deficit in affect recognition.     

Neural correlates of attention to emotional facial expressions in dysphoria

The present study investigated whether dysphoric individuals have a difficulty in disengaging attention from negative stimuli and/or reduced attention to positive information. Sad, neutral and happy facial stimuli were presented in an attention-shifting task to 18 dysphoric and 18 control participants. Reaction times to neutral shapes (squares and diamonds) and the event-related potentials to emotional faces were recorded. Dysphoric individuals did not show impaired attentional disengagement from sad faces or facilitated disengagement from happy faces. Right occipital lateralisation of P100 was absent in dysphoric individuals, possibly indicating reduced attention-related sensory facilitation for faces. Frontal P200 was largest for sad faces among dysphoric individuals, whereas controls showed larger amplitude to both sad and happy as compared with neutral expressions, suggesting that dysphoric individuals deployed early attention to sad, but not happy, expressions. Importantly, the results were obtained controlling for the participants' trait anxiety. We conclude that at least under some circumstances the presence of depressive symptoms can modulate early, automatic stages of emotional processing.     

Social anxiety and difficulty disengaging threat: evidence from eye-tracking

Theoretical models of social phobia propose that biased attention contributes to the maintenance of symptoms; however these theoretical models make opposing predictions. Specifically, whereas Rapee and Heimberg (1997) suggested the biases are characterised by hypervigilance to threat cues and difficulty disengaging attention from threat, Clark and Wells (1995) suggested that threat cues are largely avoided. Previous research has been limited by the almost exclusive reliance on behavioural response times to experimental tasks to provide an index of attentional biases. The current study evaluated the relationship between the time-course of attention and symptoms of social anxiety and depression. Forty-two young adults completed a dot-probe task with emotional faces while eye-movement data were collected. The results revealed that increased social anxiety was associated with attention to emotional (rather than neutral) faces over time as well as difficulty disengaging attention from angry expressions; some evidence was found for a relationship between heightened depressive symptoms and increased attention to fear faces.     

Identification of emotional facial expressions among behaviorally inhibited adolescents with lifetime anxiety disorders

The current study examined differences in emotion expression identification between adolescents characterised with behavioural inhibition (BI) in childhood with and without a lifetime history of anxiety disorder. Participants were originally assessed for BI during toddlerhood and for social reticence during childhood. During adolescence, participants returned to the laboratory and completed a facial emotion identification task and a clinical psychiatric interview. Results revealed that behaviorally inhibited adolescents with a lifetime history of anxiety disorder displayed a lower threshold for identifying fear relative to anger emotion expressions compared to non-anxious behaviorally inhibited adolescents and non-inhibited adolescents with or without anxiety. These findings were specific to behaviorally inhibited adolescents with a lifetime history of social anxiety disorder. Thus, adolescents with a history of both BI and anxiety, specifically social anxiety, are more likely to differ from other adolescents in their identification of fearful facial expressions. This offers further evidence that perturbations in the processing of emotional stimuli may underlie the aetiology of anxiety disorders.     

Affective asynchrony and the measurement of the affective attitude component

Theoretical models of social phobia propose that biased attention contributes to the maintenance of symptoms; however these theoretical models make opposing predictions. Specifically, whereas Rapee and Heimberg (1997) suggested the biases are characterised by hypervigilance to threat cues and difficulty disengaging attention from threat, Clark and Wells (1995) suggested that threat cues are largely avoided. Previous research has been limited by the almost exclusive reliance on behavioural response times to experimental tasks to provide an index of attentional biases. The current study evaluated the relationship between the time-course of attention and symptoms of social anxiety and depression. Forty-two young adults completed a dot-probe task with emotional faces while eye-movement data were collected. The results revealed that increased social anxiety was associated with attention to emotional (rather than neutral) faces over time as well as difficulty disengaging attention from angry expressions; some evidence was found for a relationship between heightened depressive symptoms and increased attention to fear faces.     

Interoceptive sensitivity predicts sensitivity to the emotions of others

Some theories of emotion emphasise a close relationship between interoception and subjective experiences of emotion. In this study, we used facial expressions to examine whether interoceptive sensibility modulated emotional experience in a social context. Interoceptive sensibility was measured using the heartbeat detection task. To estimate individual emotional sensitivity, we made morphed photos that ranged between a neutral and an emotional facial expression (i.e., anger, sadness, disgust and happy). Recognition rates of particular emotions from these photos were calculated and considered as emotional sensitivity thresholds. Our results indicate that participants with accurate interoceptive awareness are sensitive to the emotions of others, especially for expressions of sadness and happy. We also found that false responses to sad faces were closely related with an individual's degree of social anxiety. These results suggest that interoceptive awareness modulates the intensity of the subjective experience of emotion and affects individual traits related to emotion processing.