Facial emotion recognition accuracy and child physical abuse: An experiment and a meta-analysis.

Abstract Objective The ability to accurately identify facial expressions of emotions is crucial in human interaction. While a previous study suggested deficient emotional face recognition in patients with fibromyalgia, not much is known about the origin of this impairment. Against this background, this study investigated the role of executive functions. Executive functions refer to cognitive control mechanisms enabling implementation and coordination of basic mental operations. Deficits in this domain are prevalent in fibromyalgia. Methods Fifty-two fibromyalgia patients and thirty-two healthy individuals completed the Ekman-60 Faces Test, which requires classification of facial displays of happiness, sadness, anger, fear, surprise and disgust. They also completed eight tasks assessing the executive function components of shifting, updating and inhibition. Effects of comorbid depression and anxiety disorders, and medication use, were tested in stratified analyses of patient subgroups. Results Patients made more errors overall than controls in classifying the emotional expressions. Moreover, their recognition accuracy correlated positively with performance on most of the executive function tasks. Emotion recognition did not vary as a function of comorbid psychiatric disorders or medication use. Conclusions The study supports impaired facial emotion recognition in fibromyalgia, which may contribute to the interaction problems and poor social functioning characterizing this condition. Facial emotion recognition is regarded as a complex process, which may be particularly reliant on efficient coordination of various basic operations by executive functions. As such, the correlations between cognitive task performance and recognition accuracy suggest that deficits in higher cognitive functions underlie impaired emotional communication in fibromyalgia.

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Facial Affect Recognition in Myasthenia Gravis

The Spanish Journal of Psychology ◽

10.1017/sjp.2013.59 ◽

2013 ◽

Vol 16 ◽

Cited By ~ 4

Author(s):

Esther Lázaro ◽

Imanol Amayra ◽

Juan Francisco López-Paz ◽

Amaia Jometón ◽

Natalia Martín ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Reaction Time ◽

Emotion Recognition ◽

Facial Expressions ◽

Recognition Accuracy ◽

Facial Affect ◽

Facial Emotion Recognition ◽

Facial Emotion ◽

Healthy Controls ◽

Emotional Facial Expressions ◽

Clinical Neurological Examination

AbstractThe assessment of facial expression is an important aspect of a clinical neurological examination, both as an indicator of a mood disorder and as a sign of neurological damage. To date, although studies have been conducted on certain psychosocial aspects of myasthenia, such as quality of life and anxiety, and on neuropsychological aspects such as memory, no studies have directly assessed facial emotion recognition accuracy. The aim of this study was to assess the facial emotion recognition accuracy (fear, surprise, sadness, happiness, anger, and disgust), empathy, and reaction time of patients with myasthenia. Thirty-five patients with myasthenia and 36 healthy controls were tested for their ability to differentiate emotional facial expressions. Participants were matched with respect to age, gender, and education level. Their ability to differentiate emotional facial expressions was evaluated using the computer-based program Feel Test. The data showed that myasthenic patients scored significantly lower (p < 0.05) than healthy controls in the total Feel score, fear, surprise, and higher reaction time. The findings suggest that the ability to recognize facial affect may be reduced in individuals with myasthenia.

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Foveal processing of emotion-informative facial features

10.31234/osf.io/f3nzy ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Nazire Duran ◽

ANTHONY P. ATKINSON

Keyword(s):

Emotion Recognition ◽

Facial Expressions ◽

Recognition Accuracy ◽

Recognition Performance ◽

Facial Emotion Recognition ◽

Facial Emotion ◽

Facial Features ◽

Recognition Of Facial Expressions ◽

Initial Fixation ◽

Gaze Behaviour

Certain facial features provide useful information for recognition of facial expressions. In two experiments, we investigated whether foveating informative features of briefly presented expressions improves recognition accuracy and whether these features are targeted reflexively when not foveated. Angry, fearful, surprised, and sad or disgusted expressions were presented briefly at locations which would ensure foveation of specific features. Foveating the mouth of fearful, surprised and disgusted expressions improved emotion recognition compared to foveating an eye or cheek or the central brow. Foveating the brow lead to equivocal results in anger recognition across the two experiments, which might be due to the different combination of emotions used. There was no consistent evidence suggesting that reflexive first saccades targeted emotion-relevant features; instead, they targeted the closest feature to initial fixation. In a third experiment, angry, fearful, surprised and disgusted expressions were presented for 5 seconds. Duration of task-related fixations in the eyes, brow, nose and mouth regions was modulated by the presented expression. Moreover, longer fixation at the mouth positively correlated with anger and disgust accuracy both when these expressions were freely viewed (Experiment 3) and when briefly presented at the mouth (Experiment 2). Finally, an overall preference to fixate the mouth across all expressions correlated positively with anger and disgust accuracy. These findings suggest that foveal processing of informative features is functional/contributory to emotion recognition, but they are not automatically sought out when not foveated, and that facial emotion recognition performance is related to idiosyncratic gaze behaviour.

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Foveal processing of emotion-informative facial features

PLoS ONE ◽

10.1371/journal.pone.0260814 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 16 (12) ◽

pp. e0260814

Author(s):

Nazire Duran ◽

Anthony P. Atkinson

Keyword(s):

Emotion Recognition ◽

Facial Expressions ◽

Recognition Accuracy ◽

Recognition Performance ◽

Facial Emotion Recognition ◽

Facial Emotion ◽

Facial Features ◽

Recognition Of Facial Expressions ◽

Initial Fixation ◽

Gaze Behaviour

Certain facial features provide useful information for recognition of facial expressions. In two experiments, we investigated whether foveating informative features of briefly presented expressions improves recognition accuracy and whether these features are targeted reflexively when not foveated. Angry, fearful, surprised, and sad or disgusted expressions were presented briefly at locations which would ensure foveation of specific features. Foveating the mouth of fearful, surprised and disgusted expressions improved emotion recognition compared to foveating an eye or cheek or the central brow. Foveating the brow led to equivocal results in anger recognition across the two experiments, which might be due to the different combination of emotions used. There was no consistent evidence suggesting that reflexive first saccades targeted emotion-relevant features; instead, they targeted the closest feature to initial fixation. In a third experiment, angry, fearful, surprised and disgusted expressions were presented for 5 seconds. Duration of task-related fixations in the eyes, brow, nose and mouth regions was modulated by the presented expression. Moreover, longer fixation at the mouth positively correlated with anger and disgust accuracy both when these expressions were freely viewed (Experiment 2b) and when briefly presented at the mouth (Experiment 2a). Finally, an overall preference to fixate the mouth across all expressions correlated positively with anger and disgust accuracy. These findings suggest that foveal processing of informative features is functional/contributory to emotion recognition, but they are not automatically sought out when not foveated, and that facial emotion recognition performance is related to idiosyncratic gaze behaviour.

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The Effect of Classification Methods on Facial Emotion Recognition ‎Accuracy

British Journal of Applied Science & Technology ◽

10.9734/bjast/2016/23090 ◽

2016 ◽

Vol 14 (4) ◽

pp. 1-11 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Suhaila Mohammed ◽

Loay George ◽

Hayder Dawood

Keyword(s):

Emotion Recognition ◽

Recognition Accuracy ◽

Facial Emotion Recognition ◽

Facial Emotion ◽

Classification Methods

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Facial emotion recognition in alcohol and substance use disorders: A meta-analysis

Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews ◽

10.1016/j.neubiorev.2015.11.001 ◽

2015 ◽

Vol 59 ◽

pp. 147-154 ◽

Cited By ~ 39

Author(s):

Filippo Castellano ◽

Francesco Bartoli ◽

Cristina Crocamo ◽

Giulia Gamba ◽

Martina Tremolada ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Substance Use ◽

Emotion Recognition ◽

Substance Use Disorders ◽

Meta Analysis ◽

Facial Emotion Recognition ◽

Facial Emotion

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Facial emotion recognition impairment predicts social and emotional problems in children with (subthreshold) ADHD

European Child & Adolescent Psychiatry ◽

10.1007/s00787-020-01709-y ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Anouck I. Staff ◽

Marjolein Luman ◽

Saskia van der Oord ◽

Catharina E. Bergwerff ◽

Barbara J. van den Hoofdakker ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Emotion Recognition ◽

Recognition Accuracy ◽

Emotional Problems ◽

Facial Emotion Recognition ◽

Facial Emotion ◽

Adhd Group ◽

Adhd Symptoms ◽

Significant Group ◽

Expression Intensity ◽

Social And Emotional

AbstractChildren with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) symptoms often experience social and emotional problems. Impaired facial emotion recognition has been suggested as a possible underlying mechanism, although impairments may depend on the type and intensity of emotions. We investigated facial emotion recognition in children with (subthreshold) ADHD and controls using a novel task with children’s faces of emotional expressions varying in type and intensity. We further investigated associations between emotion recognition accuracy and social and emotional problems in the ADHD group. 83 children displaying ADHD symptoms and 30 controls (6–12 years) completed the Morphed Facial Emotion Recognition Task (MFERT). The MFERT assesses emotion recognition accuracy on four emotions using five expression intensity levels. Teachers and parents rated social and emotional problems on the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire. Repeated measures analysis of variance revealed that the ADHD group showed poorer emotion recognition accuracy compared to controls across emotions (small effect). The significant group by expression intensity interaction (small effect) showed that the increase in accuracy with increasing expression intensity was smaller in the ADHD group compared to controls. Multiple regression analyses within the ADHD group showed that emotion recognition accuracy was inversely related to social and emotional problems, but not prosocial behavior. Not only children with an ADHD diagnosis, but also children with subthreshold ADHD experience impairments in facial emotion recognition. This impairment is predictive for social and emotional problems, which may suggest that emotion recognition may contribute to the development of social and emotional problems in these children.

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Endogenous oxytocin levels are associated with facial emotion recognition accuracy but not gaze behavior in individuals with schizophrenia

10.31234/osf.io/bxuwk ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Michael J. Spilka ◽

William R. Keller ◽

Robert W. Buchanan ◽

james gold ◽

James I. Koenig ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Social Cognition ◽

Visual Attention ◽

Emotion Recognition ◽

Facial Expressions ◽

Recognition Accuracy ◽

Facial Emotion Recognition ◽

Facial Emotion ◽

Antipsychotic Treatment ◽

Facial Features ◽

Gaze Behavior

Objective: Difficulties in social cognition are common in individuals with schizophrenia (SZ) and are not ameliorated by antipsychotic treatment. Intranasal oxytocin (OT) administration has been explored as a potential intervention to improve social cognition; however, results are inconsistent, suggesting potential individual difference variables that may influence treatment response. Less is known about the relationship between endogenous OT and social cognition in SZ, knowledge of which may improve the development of OT-focused therapies. We examined plasma OT in relationship to facial emotion recognition and visual attention to salient facial features in SZ and controls. Methods: Forty-two individuals with SZ and 23 healthy controls viewed photographs of facial expressions of varying emotional intensity and identified the emotional expression displayed. Participants’ gaze behavior during the task was recorded via eye tracking. Plasma oxytocin concentrations were determined by radioimmunoassay. Results: SZ were less accurate than controls at identifying high intensity fearful facial expressions and low intensity sad expressions. Lower facial emotion recognition accuracy was associated with lower plasma OT levels in SZ but not controls. SZ had reduced visual attention to the nose region compared to controls; however, OT was not associated with gaze behavior. Conclusion: Individual differences in endogenous OT predict facial emotion recognition ability in SZ but are not associated with visual attention to salient facial features. Increased understanding of the association between endogenous OT and social cognitive abilities in SZ may help improve the design and interpretation of OT-focused clinical trials in SZ.

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