Positive and negative affect differentially influence identification of facial emotions

Aging and Mixed Emotions: A Word-Suffix Approach in Free Recall

The current study investigated mixed-emotional memories in groups of young, young-old, and old-old participants. We used a "word-suffix approach" to simulate the co-occurrence of positive and negative emotions. The participants engaged in a free-recall task for valenced words and mixed-emotional words (valenced words coupled with pejorative or endearment suffixes). Our results showed that the groups of older adults recalled higher numbers of suffixed words compared to their younger counterparts. Our findings highlighted older adults' tendency to perceive and remember emotionally ambivalent words to a greater extent than younger adults and showed that the young-old participants were particularly good at solving ambivalence by focusing on positive-dominant ambivalent words.

High Destination Memory for Emotionally Incongruent Information

This article investigates the effect of emotion on destination memory. Participants were asked to tell neutral, positive, and negative information to neutral, positive, and negative faces. Afterward, participants were asked to remember to whom each piece of information was previously told. Results demonstrated high destination memory when the positive face was associated with negative information than with positive information. Results also demonstrated high destination memory when the negative face was associated with positive information than with negative information. These findings are attributed to the emotional incongruence between information and its destination. When positive or negative information is presented, one may expect that the listener would experience the same emotional state. Violation of this expectation seems to result in a high retention of the context in which the violation has occurred and consequently in a high destination memory.

The effect of momentary mood on appraisal of facial affect and distrust: an experimental approach using ambulatory assessment

Previous laboratory studies have demonstrated that an observer's current mood can influence their processing of facial stimuli, for instance, the appraisal of facial affect. The aim of the present study was to explore the association between current mood and face processing in participants' daily lives, thereby making use of naturally occurring affective states. We employed Ambulatory Assessment (AA) and included two experimental tasks to test whether current mood predicts how participants evaluate (i) the valence of emotional faces and (ii) facial trustworthiness. We hypothesised a mood-congruent processing, such that individuals would rate pictures of faces more negatively and less trustworthy, the more negative their current mood was. We recruited 42 participants who completed a 7-day AA study with six random prompts per day. At each prompt, participants provided self-reports on momentary mood and completed an emotion rating task and a hypothetical distrust game. Results show that negative momentary mood was significantly associated with higher levels of distrust, but was not significantly associated with more negative emotion ratings. We discuss the incremental value and feasibility of implementing experimental tasks in AA contexts and the opportunities this opens for assessing affective and cognitive processes in natural environments.

Effects of age and mood on emotional face processing differ depending on the intensity of the facial expression

Research suggests that mood can moderate age differences in recognizing facial emotion. In this study, we examined how an anxious versus calm mood state affected younger and older adults' processing of emotional faces. Older adults had greater difficulty identifying negative emotions, particularly when emotions were displayed at a low intensity level. However, an anxious mood did not affect age differences in emotional face recognition. In contrast, age, emotional intensity, and current mood state all affected the perceived intensity of emotion. The effects of age and mood on perceived emotional intensity were only observed for low intensity facial expressions. When induced into an anxious mood, younger adults perceived threatening emotions (i.e., fear, anger) as more emotionally intense, whereas older adults perceived anger and happiness to be more intense. These findings emphasize the need to consider both internal and external factors when investigating the effects of age on emotional face processing.

Hit or Run: Exploring Aggressive and Avoidant Reactions to Interpersonal Provocation Using a Novel Fight-or-Escape Paradigm (FOE)

Interpersonal provocation presents an approach-avoidance conflict to the provoked person: responding aggressively might yield the joy of retribution, whereas withdrawal can provide safety. Experimental aggression studies typically measure only retaliation intensity, neglecting whether individuals want to confront the provocateur at all. To overcome this shortcoming of previous measures, we developed and validated the Fight-or-Escape paradigm (FOE). The FOE is a competitive reaction time (RT) task in which the winner can choose the volume of a sound blast to be directed at his/her opponent. Participants face two ostensible opponents who consistently select either high or low punishments. At the beginning of each trial, subjects are given the chance to avoid the encounter for a limited number of times. In a first experiment (n = 27, all women), we found that fear potentiation (FP) of the startle response was related to lower scores in a composite measure of aggression and avoidance against the provoking opponent. In a second experiment (n = 34, 13 men), we altered the paradigm such that participants faced the opponents in alternating rather than in random order. Participants completed the FOE as well as the Dot-Probe Task (DPT) and the Approach-Avoidance Task (AAT). Subjects with higher approach bias scores in the AAT avoided the provoking opponent less frequently. Hence, individuals with high threat reactivity and low approach motivation displayed more avoidant responses to provocation, whereas participants high in approach motivation were more likely to engage in aggressive interactions when provoked. The FOE is thus a promising laboratory measure of avoidance and aggression.

Positive emotion impedes emotional but not cognitive conflict processing

Cognitive control enables successful goal-directed behavior by resolving a conflict between opposing action tendencies, while emotional control arises as a consequence of emotional conflict processing such as in irony. While negative emotion facilitates both cognitive and emotional conflict processing, it is unclear how emotional conflict processing is affected by positive emotion (e.g., humor). In 2 EEG experiments, we investigated the role of positive audiovisual target stimuli in cognitive and emotional conflict processing. Participants categorized either spoken vowels (cognitive task) or their emotional valence (emotional task) and ignored the visual stimulus dimension. Behaviorally, a positive target showed no influence on cognitive conflict processing, but impeded emotional conflict processing. In the emotional task, response time conflict costs were higher for positive than for neutral targets. In the EEG, we observed an interaction of emotion by congruence in the P200 and N200 ERP components in emotional but not in cognitive conflict processing. In the emotional conflict task, the P200 and N200 conflict effect was larger for emotional than neutral targets. Thus, our results show that emotion affects conflict processing differently as a function of conflict type and emotional valence. This suggests that there are conflict- and valence-specific mechanisms modulating executive control.

Alexithymia and automatic processing of emotional stimuli: a systematic review

Alexithymia is a personality trait characterized by difficulties in recognizing and verbalizing emotions and the utilization of a cognitive style that is oriented toward external events, rather than intrapsychic experiences. Alexithymia is considered a vulnerability factor influencing onset and course of many psychiatric disorders. Even though emotions are, in general, elicited involuntarily and emerge without conscious effort, it is surprising that little attention in etiological considerations concerning alexithymia has been given to deficits in automatic emotion processing and their neurobiological bases. In this article, results from studies using behavioral or neurobiological research methods were systematically reviewed in which automatic processing of external emotional information was investigated as a function of alexithymia in healthy individuals. Twenty-two studies were identified through a literature search of Psycinfo, PubMed, and Web of Science databases from 1990 to 2016. The review reveals deficits in the automatic processing of emotional stimuli in alexithymia at a behavioral and neurobiological level. The vast majority of the reviewed studies examined visual processing. The alexithymia facets externally oriented thinking and difficulties identifying feelings were found to be related to impairments in the automatic processing of threat-related facial expressions. Alexithymic individuals manifest low reactivity to barely visible negative emotional stimuli in brain regions responsible for appraisal, encoding, and affective response, e.g. amygdala, occipitotemporal areas, and insula. Against this background, it appears plausible to assume that deficits in automatic emotion processing could be factors contributing to alexithymic personality characteristics. Directions for future research on alexithymia and automatic emotion perception are suggested.

Cognitive predictors of violent incidents in forensic psychiatric inpatients

This study tested the predictive value of attentional bias, emotion recognition, automatic associations, and response inhibition, in the assessment of in-clinic violent incidents. Sixty-nine male forensic patients participated and completed an Emotional Stroop to measure attentional bias for threat and aggression, a Single Target - Implicit Association Task to assess automatic associations, a Graded Emotional Recognition Task to measure emotion recognition, and an Affective Go/NoGo to measure response inhibition. Violent incidents were derived from patient files and scored on severity level. The predictive value of level of psychopathy was tested with the Psychopathy Checklist - Revised (PCL-R). Generalized linear mixed model analyses showed that increased attention towards threat and aggression, difficulty recognizing sad faces and factor 2 of the PCL-R predicted the sum of violent incidents. Specifically, verbal aggression was predicted by increased attention towards threat and aggression, difficulty to recognize sad and happy faces, and PCL-R factor 2; physical aggression by decreased response inhibition, higher PCL-R factor 2 and lower PCL-R factor 1 scores; and aggression against property by difficulty recognizing angry faces. Findings indicate that cognitive tasks could be valuable in predicting aggression, thereby extending current knowledge on dynamic factors predicting aggressive behavior in forensic patients.

The Influences of Whole Brain Radiotherapy on Social Cognition and Association with Hippocampal and Frontal Dosimetry

The influence of brain radiotherapy on neurocognition is a major concern. Social cognition is a mental process in the meaning of social interaction and the recognition of facial emotion is a domain of social cognition. Thus, we aimed to investigate the early effect of whole brain radiotherapy on facial emotion recognition ability. Thirteen patients with various brain tumors in the study. Beck depression and anxiety inventory and the facial emotion recognition test by using a set of photographs were performed at the beginning and post radiotherapy. The severity of depression (16.40 ± 12.16 vs 04.00 ± 02.38 points) and anxiety (14.47 ± 11.96 vs 04.54 ± 03.30 points) were significantly higher in patients. The only significance according to facial emotion recognition rate between initial phase of patients and healthy controls was identifying neutral facial em otion (p = 0.002). The patients after brain radiotherapy had significantly better rate of recognizing fear facial emotions (p = 0.039). This study is the first that investigated the effects of cranial irradiation on facial emotion recognition ability and compares this ability with healthy controls. Interestingly, in the early phase the patients seem to be improved in fear facial emotion after brain radiotherapy without sparing cognition specific regions as hippocampus and frontal regions.

Implicit affectivity and rapid processing of affective body language: An fMRI study

Previous research has revealed affect-congruity effects for the recognition of affects from faces. Little is known about the impact of affect on the perception of body language. The aim of the present study was to investigate the relationship of implicit (versus explicit) affectivity with the recognition of briefly presented affective body expressions. Implicit affectivity, which can be measured using indirect assessment methods, has been found to be more predictive of spontaneous physiological reactions than explicit (self-reported) affect. Thirty-four healthy women had to label the expression of body postures (angry, fearful, happy, or neutral) presented for 66 ms and masked by a neutral body posture in a forced-choice format while undergoing functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Participants' implicit affectivity was assessed using the Implicit Positive and Negative Affect Test. Measures of explicit state and trait affectivity were also administered. Analysis of the fMRI data was focused on a subcortical network involved in the rapid perception of affective body expressions. Only implicit negative affect (but not explicit affect) was correlated with correct labeling performance for angry body posture. As expected, implicit negative affect was positively associated with activation of the subcortical network in response to fearful and angry expression (compared to neutral expression). Responses of the caudate nucleus to affective body expression were especially associated with its recognition. It appears that processes of rapid recognition of affects from body postures could be facilitated by an individual's implicit negative affect.

Emotion recognition in borderline personality disorder: effects of emotional information on negative bias

BACKGROUND

Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) is characterized by severe deficits in social interactions, which might be linked to deficits in emotion recognition. Research on emotion recognition abilities in BPD revealed heterogeneous results, ranging from deficits to heightened sensitivity. The most stable findings point to an impairment in the evaluation of neutral facial expressions as neutral, as well as to a negative bias in emotion recognition; that is the tendency to attribute negative emotions to neutral expressions, or in a broader sense to report a more negative emotion category than depicted. However, it remains unclear which contextual factors influence the occurrence of this negative bias. Previous studies suggest that priming by preceding emotional information and also constrained processing time might augment the emotion recognition deficit in BPD.

METHODS

To test these assumptions, 32 female BPD patients and 31 healthy females, matched for age and education, participated in an emotion recognition study, in which every facial expression was preceded by either a positive, neutral or negative scene. Furthermore, time constraints for processing were varied by presenting the facial expressions with short (100 ms) or long duration (up to 3000 ms) in two separate blocks.

RESULTS

BPD patients showed a significant deficit in emotion recognition for neutral and positive facial expression, associated with a significant negative bias. In BPD patients, this emotion recognition deficit was differentially affected by preceding emotional information and time constraints, with a greater influence of emotional information during long face presentations and a greater influence of neutral information during short face presentations.

CONCLUSIONS

Our results are in line with previous findings supporting the existence of a negative bias in emotion recognition in BPD patients, and provide further insights into biased social perceptions in BPD patients.

A note on age differences in mood-congruent vs. mood-incongruent emotion processing in faces

THIS ARTICLE ADDRESSES FOUR INTERRELATED RESEARCH QUESTIONS

(1) Does experienced mood affect emotion perception in faces and is this perception mood-congruent or mood-incongruent?(2) Are there age-group differences in the interplay between experienced mood and emotion perception? (3) Does emotion perception in faces change as a function of the temporal sequence of study sessions and stimuli presentation, and (4) does emotion perception in faces serve a mood-regulatory function? One hundred fifty-four adults of three different age groups (younger: 20-31 years; middle-aged: 44-55 years; older adults: 70-81 years) were asked to provide multidimensional emotion ratings of a total of 1026 face pictures of younger, middle-aged, and older men and women, each displaying six different prototypical (primary) emotional expressions. By analyzing the likelihood of ascribing an additional emotional expression to a face whose primary emotion had been correctly recognized, the multidimensional rating approach permits the study of emotion perception while controlling for emotion recognition. Following up on previous research on mood responses to recurring unpleasant situations using the same dataset (Voelkle et al., 2013), crossed random effects analyses supported a mood-congruent relationship between experienced mood and perceived emotions in faces. In particular older adults were more likely to perceive happiness in faces when being in a positive mood and less likely to do so when being in a negative mood. This did not apply to younger adults. Temporal sequence of study sessions and stimuli presentation had a strong effect on the likelihood of ascribing an additional emotional expression. In contrast to previous findings, however, there was neither evidence for a change from mood-congruent to mood-incongruent responses over time nor evidence for a mood-regulatory effect.

Hostility and cigarette use: a comparison between smokers and nonsmokers in a matched sample of adolescents

INTRODUCTION

We examined the association between hostility-a personality trait reflective of negativity and cynicism toward others-and smoking in adolescents by measuring (a) several subcomponents of hostility, and (b) facial emotion processing ability, which has been previously linked to hostility.

METHODS

Participants (N = 241 aged 14-19) were 95 smokers and 95 demographically matched nonsmokers as well as 51 nonmatched smokers. All participants completed the Cook-Medley (C-M) hostility scale, which provides a general hostility score and 3 component scores (cynicism, hypersensitivity, and aggressive responding), and a facial emotion processing task. This task, designed to assess emotion recognition, requires quickly identifying the emotion of faces that gradually morph from neutral to high-intensity happy, angry, or fearful.

RESULTS

Independent sample t tests indicated that matched smokers scored significantly higher in cynicism and aggressive responding than nonsmokers. Among smokers, age of smoking onset was negatively correlated with general hostility and aggressive responding. All hostility scales were positively correlated with the intensity needed to recognize happy faces. Counterintuitively, smokers required a greater intensity to recognize angry faces than nonsmokers. No other relations between hostility/smoking status and facial emotion processing were observed.

CONCLUSIONS

Aspects of hostility, particularly aggressive responding, may be a risk factor for early onset smoking. Although hostile participants exhibited a deficiency in their ability to recognize happiness in facial pictures, these results did not translate to differences in smoking status. This study elucidates some of the complex interrelations between hostility, emotion processing, and adolescent smoking, which may have implications for teen smoking prevention.

Empathy in adults with clinical or subclinical depressive symptoms

BACKGROUND

Depression is associated with problems in social functioning. Impaired empathic abilities might underlie this association. Empathy is a multidimensional construct and involves both affective and cognitive processes. We reviewed the literature to find out to what extent depression may be associated with abnormal levels of affective and cognitive empathy. We also explored potential gender differences in these associations.

METHODS

We used PsycInfo and Medline to conduct a systematic review of all studies on empathy and depression conducted in individuals with a primary diagnosis of major depressive disorder (MDD; patient samples) or in individuals with primarily subclinical depressive symptoms (analog samples).

RESULTS

Thirty-seven studies met the inclusion criteria. The results indicated that depression was related to one type of affective empathy. Specifically, depression was related to high levels of empathic stress but not to abnormal empathic concern. Further, depression was related to limited cognitive empathy, as indicated by poor perspective taking, theory of mind, and empathic accuracy.

LIMITATIONS

Few studies have considered the variable gender in their design and analyses. Between and within study variation in demographic and clinical variables limits the interpretation of results. Self-report measures of empathy are subjective and vulnerable to bias. Poor performance on the more objective laboratory tasks might partially be explained by the broader cognitive deficits commonly observed in depression. Lastly, because all studies used a cross-sectional design, causality is difficult to establish.

CONCLUSIONS

Empathic abilities may be impaired in depression. The relation between empathy, depression, and gender is unclear. Future studies could use implicit and more ecologically valid measures of empathy. Insight into impaired empathy in depression may not only help explain poor social functioning in MDD but also benefit clinician-patient interactions.

Emotional response inhibition in bipolar disorder: a functional magnetic resonance imaging study of trait- and state-related abnormalities

BACKGROUND

Impaired response inhibition and poor impulse control are hallmarks of the manic phase of bipolar disorder but are also present during depressive and, to a lesser degree, euthymic periods. The neural mechanisms underlying these impairments are poorly understood, including how mechanisms are related to bipolar trait or state effects.

METHODS

One-hundred four unmedicated participants with bipolar mania (BM) (n = 30), bipolar depression (BD) (n = 30), bipolar euthymia (BE) (n = 14), and healthy control subjects (n = 30) underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging during emotional and nonemotional go/no-go tasks. The go/no-go task requires participants to press a button for go stimuli, while inhibiting the response to no-go trials. In separate blocks, participants inhibited the response to happy faces, sad faces, or letters.

RESULTS

The BE group had higher insula activity during happy face inhibition and greater activity in left inferior frontal gyrus during sad face inhibition, demonstrating bipolar trait effects. Relative to the BE group, BD and BM groups demonstrated lower insula activity during inhibition of happy faces, though the depressed sample had lower activity than manic patients. The BD and BM groups had a greater response to inhibiting sad faces in emotion processing and regulation regions, including putamen, insula, and lateral prefrontal cortex. The manic group also had higher activity in insula and putamen during neutral letter inhibition.

CONCLUSIONS

These results suggest distinct trait- and state-related neural abnormalities during response inhibition in bipolar disorder, with implications for future research and treatment.

Age differences in valence judgments of emotional faces: the influence of personality traits and current mood

Previous research on emotion processing revealed a positivity bias that progressively evolves across the adult age range. This study obtained gradual valence judgments of emotional faces across the adult age span, to see whether this positivity bias persists when positive and negative stimuli are matched for arousal; and whether bias relates to personality traits or to current mood. With increasing age subjects judged negative and neutral faces less negatively. Further, younger participants scoring high in "agreeableness" and "conscientiousness" scales showed a positivity bias when judging positive faces, suggesting an association of the positivity effect with trait variables.

High Hostility Among Smokers Predicts Slower Recognition of Positive Facial Emotion

High levels of trait hostility are associated with wide-ranging interpersonal deficits and heightened physiological response to social stressors. These deficits may be attributable in part to individual differences in the perception of social cues. The present study evaluated the ability to recognize facial emotion among 48 high hostile (HH) and 48 low hostile (LH) smokers and whether experimentally-manipulated acute nicotine deprivation moderated relations between hostility and facial emotion recognition. A computer program presented series of pictures of faces that morphed from a neutral emotion into increasing intensities of happiness, sadness, fear, or anger, and participants were asked to identify the emotion displayed as quickly as possible. Results indicated that HH smokers, relative to LH smokers, required a significantly greater intensity of emotion expression to recognize happiness. No differences were found for other emotions across HH and LH individuals, nor did nicotine deprivation moderate relations between hostility and emotion recognition. This is the first study to show that HH individuals are slower to recognize happy facial expressions and that this occurs regardless of recent tobacco abstinence. Difficulty recognizing happiness in others may impact the degree to which HH individuals are able to identify social approach signals and to receive social reinforcement.

The effects of postnatal maternal depression and anxiety on the processing of infant faces

BACKGROUND

Postnatally depressed mothers have difficulties responding appropriately to their infants. The quality of the mother-child relationship depends on a mother's ability to respond to her infant's cues, which are largely non-verbal. Therefore, it is likely that difficulties in a mother's appraisal of her infants' facial expressions will affect the quality of mother-infant interaction. This study aimed to investigate the effects of postnatal depression and anxiety on the processing of infants' facial expressions.

METHOD

A total of 89 mothers, 34 with Generalised Anxiety Disorder, 21 with Major Depressive Disorder, and 34 controls, completed a 'morphed infants' faces task when their children were between 10 and 18 months.

RESULTS

Overall, mothers were more likely to identify happy faces accurately and at lower intensity than sad faces. Depressed compared to control participants, however, were less likely to accurately identify happy infant faces. Interestingly, mothers with GAD tended to identify happy faces at a lower intensity than controls. There were no differences between the groups in relation to sad faces.

LIMITATIONS

Our sample was relatively small and further research is needed to investigate the links between mothers' perceptions of infant expressions and both maternal responsiveness and later measures of child development.

CONCLUSION

Our findings have potential clinical implications as the difficulties in the processing of positive facial expressions in depression may lead to less maternal responsiveness to positive affect in the offspring and may diminish the quality of the mother-child interactions. Results for participants with GAD are consistent with the literature demonstrating that persons with GAD are intolerant of uncertainty and seek reassurance due to their worries.

What is the relationship between the recognition of emotions and core beliefs: Associations between the recognition of emotions in facial expressions and the maladaptive schemas in depressed patients

BACKGROUND

Depressed patients are both characterized by social reality distorting maladaptive schemas and facial expression recognition impairments. The aim of the present study was to identify specific associations among symptom severity of depression, early maladaptive schemas and recognition patterns of facially expressed emotions.

METHODS

The subjects were inpatients, diagnosed with depression. We used 2 virtual humans for presenting the basic emotions to assess emotion recognition. The Symptom Check List 90 (SCL-90) was used as a self-report measure of psychiatric symptoms and the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI) was applied to assess symptoms of depression. The Young Schema Questionnaire Long Form (YSQ-L) was used to assess the presence of early maladaptive schemas.

RESULTS

The recognition rate for happiness showed significant associations with both the BDI and the depression subscale of the SCL-90. After performing the second order factor analysis of the YSQ-L, we found statistically significant associations between the recognition indices of specific emotions and the main factors of the YSQ-L.

CONCLUSIONS

In this study we found correlations between maladaptive schemas and emotion recognition impairments. While both domains likely contribute to the symptoms of depression, we believe that the results will help us to better understand the social cognitive deficits of depressed patients at the schema level and at the emotion recognition level.

Affective cognition and its disruption in mood disorders

In this review, we consider affective cognition, responses to emotional stimuli occurring in the context of cognitive evaluation. In particular, we discuss emotion categorization, biasing of memory and attention, as well as social/moral emotion. We discuss limited neuropsychological evidence suggesting that affective cognition depends critically on the amygdala, ventromedial frontal cortex, and the connections between them. We then consider neuroimaging studies of affective cognition in healthy volunteers, which have led to the development of more sophisticated neural models of these processes. Disturbances of affective cognition are a core and specific feature of mood disorders, and we discuss the evidence supporting this claim, both from behavioral and neuroimaging perspectives. Serotonin is considered to be a key neurotransmitter involved in depression, and there is a considerable body of research exploring whether serotonin may mediate disturbances of affective cognition. The final section presents an overview of this literature and considers implications for understanding the pathophysiology of mood disorder as well as developing and evaluating new treatment strategies.

Facial affect recognition in anorexia nervosa: is obsessionality a missing piece of the puzzle?

OBJECTIVE

Socio-emotional difficulties are thought to be important maintaining factors of eating disorders. Several studies point to deficits in facial affect recognition in anorexia nervosa (AN). However, the majority of these studies fail to control for comorbidity and its effect on emotional processing. This study aims to explore how patients with AN recognize happiness and sadness in human faces, controlling for different comorbidities, namely anxiety, depression, and obsessive-compulsive symptoms.

METHODS

Thirty patients with AN, and 40 healthy participants completed a facial emotion recognition task. This task measured discrimination accuracy, response bias and response time towards sad and happy faces presented at different durations (500 ms, 2000 ms). The associations between facial affect recognition and clinical symptoms and intelligence quotient were explored.

RESULTS

Regression analysis showed that discrimination accuracy of sad faces presented for 500 ms was significantly associated with AN diagnosis, body mass index, and Obsessive-compulsive symptoms. However, the level of Obsessive-compulsive symptoms was the strongest predictor of a poor discrimination of briefly presented sad faces.

CONCLUSIONS

Our results support previous studies that report emotional processing deficits in AN with obsessionality playing a pivotal role in this deficit.

Negative bias in fast emotion discrimination in borderline personality disorder

BACKGROUND

The ability to decode emotional information from facial expressions is crucial for successful social interaction. Borderline personality disorder (BPD) is characterized by serious problems in interpersonal relationships and emotional functioning. Empirical research on facial emotion recognition in BPD has been sparsely published and results are inconsistent. To specify emotion recognition deficits in BPD more closely, the present study implemented two emotion recognition tasks differing in response format.

METHOD

Nineteen patients with BPD and 19 healthy subjects were asked to evaluate the emotional content of visually presented stimuli (emotional and neutral faces). The first task, the Fear Anger Neutral (FAN) Test, required a rapid discrimination between negative or neutral facial expressions whereas in the second task, the Emotion Recognition (ER) Test, a precise decision regarding default emotions (sadness, happiness, anger, fear and neutral) had to be achieved without a time limit.

RESULTS

In comparison to healthy subjects, BPD patients showed a deficit in emotion recognition only in the fast discrimination of negative and neutral facial expressions (FAN Test). Consistent with earlier findings, patients demonstrated a negative bias in the evaluation of neutral facial expressions. When processing time was unlimited (ER Test), BPD patients performed as well as healthy subjects in the recognition of specific emotions. In addition, an association between performance in the fast discrimination task (FAN Test) and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) co-morbidity was indicated.

CONCLUSIONS

Our data suggest a selective deficit of BPD patients in rapid and direct discrimination of negative and neutral emotional expressions that may underlie difficulties in social interactions.

CNTRICS final task selection: social cognitive and affective neuroscience-based measures

This article describes the results and recommendations of the third Cognitive Neuroscience Treatment Research to Improve Cognition in Schizophrenia meeting related to measuring treatment effects on social and affective processing. At the first meeting, it was recommended that measurement development focuses on the construct of emotion identification and responding. Five Tasks were nominated as candidate measures for this construct via the premeeting web-based survey. Two of the 5 tasks were recommended for immediate translation, the Penn Emotion Recognition Task and the Facial Affect Recognition and the Effects of Situational Context, which provides a measure of emotion identification and responding as well as a related, higher level construct, context-based modulation of emotional responding. This article summarizes the criteria-based, consensus building analysis of each nominated task that led to these 2 paradigms being recommended as priority tasks for development as measures of treatment effects on negative symptoms in schizophrenia.

Wahrnehmung und Bewertung von emotionalen Gesichtsausdrücken bei weiblichen Jugendlichen mit einer Borderline-Persönlichkeitsstörung

Zusammenfassung: Fragestellung: Untersuchung der Wahrnehmung von emotionalen und neutralen Gesichtsausdrücken bei weiblichen Jugendlichen mit einer Borderline-Persönlichkeitsstörung (BPS). Methodik: Bei 30 Jugendlichen mit der Diagnose einer BPS, 29 Jugendlichen mit anderen psychischen Störungen sowie 30 psychisch gesunden Jugendlichen wurden emotionale und neutrale Gesichtsausdrücke aus dem Bildersatz von Ekman und Friesen (1976) vorgelegt. Sämtliche Studienteilnehmer waren weiblichen Geschlechts. Mit Hilfe eines selbst konstruierten Fragebogens zur Wahrnehmung von Emotionen in Gesichtsausdrücken sollten die Jugendlichen die Art der dargestellten Emotion benennen sowie Einschätzungen über die wahrgenommene Intensität, Bedrohlichkeit und Positivität vornehmen. Ergebnisse: Jugendliche Patientinnen mit der Diagnose einer BPS zeigten keine Schwierigkeiten bei der Benennung der dargestellten Emotionen sowie bei der subjektiven Einschätzung negativ emotionaler und neutraler Gesichtsausdrücke. In der Wahrnehmung positiv emotionaler Gesichtsausdrücke zeigte sich allerdings, dass Jugendliche mit der Diagnose einer BPS die Positivität und Intensität positiver Gesichtsausdrücke geringer und die Bedrohlichkeit höher einschätzten als die beiden Kontrollgruppen. Schlussfolgerungen: Die Verarbeitung positiver Reize und deren Rolle bei der Emotionsregulation bei Jugendlichen mit einer BPS sollte Gegenstand weiterer Forschung sein. Aufgrund der dysfunktionalen Interpretation positiv emotionaler Stimuli könnte es gewinnbringend sein, differenziert auf die möglichen Wahrnehmungsverzerrungen der Patienten im Therapieprozess einzugehen.

Anhedonia, Emotional Numbing, and Symptom Overreporting in Male Veterans with PTSD

We used measures of positive affect and emotional expression to distinguish and better understand veterans with PTSD with symptom overreporting presentation styles. Based on prior research, symptom overreporting was defined as scores greater than eight on the F(p) (Infrequency-Psychopathology) scale of the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory-2 (MMPI-2). Data were drawn from an archival dataset of 227 combat veteran outpatients. Results were consistent with theory and research on the distinction between negative and positive affect. Major findings indicated that (a) veterans endorsing greater anhedonia had a greater likelihood of being classified as a symptom overreporter (controlling for PTSD symptoms), and (b) compared to non-symptom overreporting veterans, overreporters showed greater congruency in their presentation of diminished positive affect and their expression across self- and clinician-ratings. Our data suggest that diminished positive emotions and their behavioral expression are uniquely associated with veterans' psychological experiences, providing insight into the nature of symptom overreporters.

Emotion and Pain: A Functional Cerebral Systems Integration

Emotion and pain are psychological constructs that have received extensive attention in neuropsychological research. However, neuropsychological models of emotional processing have made more progress in describing how brain regions interact to process emotion. Theories of emotional processing can describe inter-hemispheric and intra-hemispheric interactions during emotional processing. Due to similarities between emotion and pain, it is thought that emotional models can be applied to pain. The following review examines the neuropsychology of emotion and pain using a functional cerebral systems approach. Specific comparisons are made between pain and anger. Attention is given to differences in cerebral function and physiology that may contribute to the processing of emotion and pain. Suggestions for future research in emotion and pain are given.

Emotional information processing in mood disorders: a review of behavioral and neuroimaging findings

PURPOSE OF REVIEW

A relatively long history of research has shown that mood disorders are associated with abnormalities in the processing of emotional stimuli. Only the most recent studies, however, have begun to elucidate the specificity and neural basis of these abnormalities. This article reviews and discusses the results of these studies.

RECENT FINDINGS

Individuals diagnosed with major depressive disorder exhibit an attentional bias toward negative emotional cues (e.g. sad faces), an attentional bias away from positive emotional cues (e.g. happy faces), and an enhanced memory for negative emotional material. Compared with healthy controls, individuals with major depressive disorder show increased neural activity in response to sad faces and diminished neural activity in response to happy faces in emotion-related brain circuits (e.g. amygdala and ventral striatum). Some of these abnormalities in the processing of emotional information persist after symptom remission and they have also been found in healthy individuals who are at heightened risk for the development of mood disorders.

SUMMARY

The reviewed data show that major depressive disorder involves specific abnormalities in the cognitive and neural processing of emotional information and that these abnormalities may potentially contribute to the vulnerability for negative emotion and onset of depressive episodes.