Fearful face detection sensitivity in healthy adults correlates with anxiety-related traits.

Abstract

Threatening faces have a privileged status in the brain, which can be reflected in a processing advantage. However, this effect varies among individuals, even healthy adults. For example, one recent study showed that fearful face detection sensitivity correlated with trait anxiety in healthy adults (Japee, Crocker, Carver, Pessoa, & Ungerleider, 2009). Here, we expanded upon those findings by investigating whether intersubject variability in fearful face detection is also associated with state anxiety, as well as more broadly with other traits related to anxiety. To measure fearful face detection sensitivity, we employed a masked face paradigm where the target face was presented for only 33 ms and was immediately followed by a neutral face mask. Subjects then rated their confidence in detecting either fear or no fear in the target face. Fearful face detection sensitivity was calculated for each subject using signal detection theory. Replicating previous results, we found a significant positive correlation between trait anxiety and fearful face detection sensitivity. However, this behavioral advantage did not correlate with state anxiety. We also found that fearful face detection sensitivity correlated with other personality measures, including neuroticism and harm avoidance. Our data suggest that fearful face detection sensitivity varies parametrically across the healthy population, is associated broadly with personality traits related to anxiety, but remains largely unaffected by situational fluctuations in anxiety. These results underscore the important contribution of anxiety-related personality traits to threat processing in healthy adults.

Intersubject variability in fearful face processing: the linkbetween behavior and neural activation

“…In line with recent studies (Doty, Japee, Ingvar, & Ungerleider, 2013; Japee et al, 2009), we found that healthy subjects displayed considerable variability in detecting threatening faces. However, unlike studies that have reported behavioral enhancement for threatening faces in the healthy population (e.g.…”

Recognition of emotional facial expressions in anxious and nonanxious depression

“…Unlike stimuli in the present study, threat-relevant stimuli in some prior investigations have been either backward-masked by neutral faces (e.g. [20]), or presented in an array of other emotional faces (e.g. [19]).…”

“…Furthermore, when anxiety occurs outside the context of depression, it is robustly characterized by heightened vigilance towards threatening faces. For example, compared to healthy controls, individuals with anxiety disorders more often identify neutral or ambiguous facial expressions as negative and/or angry [17], recognize fearful faces more easily [18], and display an attentional bias towards fearful and angry faces [19, 20]. Anxious individuals also require less intensity of emotion than controls to recognize angry expressions [12].…”

Neuroticism and facial emotion recognition in healthy adults

“…9,10 Previous studies examining the association between neuroticism and facial emotion recognition in healthy individuals have found that certain emotion processing biases preceded the first depressive episode and could in part mediate the vulnerability to depression. 11,12 However, it remains unclear whether individuals scoring high on neuroticism show decreased processing of positive or increased processing of negative emotional information, or perhaps both. It is noteworthy that these studies often had moderate sample sizes and investigated only those subjects with the highest and lowest neuroticism scores (i.e.…”