Ecological momentary facial emotion recognition in psychotic disorders

Abstract

Background Cognitive tasks delivered during ecological momentary assessment (EMA) may elucidate the short-term dynamics and contextual influences on cognition and judgements of performance. This paper provides initial validation of a smartphone task of facial emotion recognition in serious mental illness. Methods A total of 86 participants with psychotic disorders (non-affective and affective psychosis), aged 19–65, were administered in-lab ‘gold standard’ affect recognition, neurocognition, and symptom assessments. They subsequently completed 10 days of the mobile facial emotion recognition task, assessing both accuracy and self-assessed performance, along with concurrent EMA of psychotic symptoms and mood. Validation focused on task adherence and predictors of adherence, gold standard convergent validity, and symptom and diagnostic group variation. Results The mean rate of adherence to the task was 79%; no demographic or clinical variables predicted adherence. Convergent validity was observed with in-lab measures of facial emotion recognition, and no practice effects were observed on the mobile facial emotion recognition task. EMA reports of more severe voices, sadness, and paranoia were associated with worse performance, whereas mood more strongly associated with self-assessed performance. Conclusion The mobile facial emotion recognition task was tolerated and demonstrated convergent validity with in-lab measures of the same construct. Social cognitive performance, and biased judgements previously shown to predict function, can be evaluated in real-time in naturalistic environments.

Mobile facial affect recognition and real-time social experiences in serious mental illness

“…Data from this study included 136 participants from a longitudinal, multi-site (University of California San Diego (UCSD); University of Texas at Dallas (UTD); University of Miami (UM)) study evaluating the relationship between social cognition and suicide in psychotic disorders. Full methods are described elsewhere ( Parrish et al, 2021a ; Depp et al, 2021 ). Participants were recruited from outpatient facilities across the three study sites: UCSD (n = 51), UTD (n = 52), and UM (n = 33).…”

“…The Mobile Electronic Test of Emotion Recognition (METER) is a smartphone-based mobile cognitive test based on the Penn Emotion Recognition test ( Kohler et al, 2000 ). Development and validation of this task are described elsewhere ( Depp et al, 2021 ). The METER is administered concurrently with the EMA surveys once per day, stratified by time of day (either morning, afternoon, or evening periods).…”

“…One approach to potentially increase the ecological validity of lab-based tasks is to deliver them at the same time and within the same context as the EMA surveys of behavior ( Moore et al, 2017 ; Parrish et al, 2021b ). We developed and validated a novel mobile facial emotion recognition measure, based on the ER-40, that can be integrated with EMA paradigms for repeated, in vivo assessment, the Mobile Ecological Test of Emotion Recognition (METER) ( Depp et al, 2021 ). This measure presents facial emotion stimuli and asks participants to judge the emotion being presented across five categories (anger, sadness, happiness, fear, or no emotion).…”

Childhood Trauma Associations With the Interpersonal Psychological Theory of Suicide and Social Cognitive Biases in Psychotic Disorders

“…In an ongoing multisite study evaluating the relationship between social cognition and suicide in serious mental illness across three university settings (Dallas, n = 37; Miami, n = 24; and San Diego, n = 35) in the United States, data from the current study are derived from a subsample of participants ( N = 96) enrolled between July 2019 and March 2020 (for more information about the parent study, see Depp et al, 2021). The target sample size for the parent study is 300, and this subsample encompassed the first third of the full sample who completed their full in-person baseline evaluation and the first EMA period of the study.…”

Initial Psychometric Properties of 7 NeuroUX Remote Ecological Momentary Cognitive Tests Among People With Bipolar Disorder: Validation Study

“…Many of the mobile cognitive tests available for download do not have accompanying psychometric data to guide their use [49]. Previous studies support the feasibility and acceptability of mobile cognitive testing, with adherence rates ranging from approximately 79% to 90% in both clinical and nonclinical samples [14][15][16]45,50,51]. Most [16,48,52] but not all [13] previous investigations report small practice effects on selected tests, with no differences across clinical and nonclinical groups.…”