Morphed emotional faces: Emotion detection and misinterpretation in social anxiety

Heuer, Kathrin; Lange, Wolf‐Gero; Isaac, Linda; Rinck, Mike; Becker, Eni S.

doi:10.1016/j.jbtep.2010.04.005

Cited by 90 publications

(60 citation statements)

References 26 publications

(55 reference statements)

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“…Models of SA (Clark & Wells, 1995;Heimberg, Brozovich, & Rapee, 2010;Rapee & Heimberg, 1997; for a review, see Wong, Gordon, & Heimberg, 2014) predict that information processing biases play a role in the maintenance of the psychopathology. Numerous studies have supported this assumption by showing, for example, that high socially anxious (HSA) individuals tend to display an attentional bias towards external threat (e.g., Miskovic & Schmidt, 2012) and a greater likelihood of favouring the threatening meaning of ambiguous cues (Amir, Beard, & Bower, 2005;Heuer, Lange, Isaac, Rinck, & Becker, 2010). In addition to being sensitive to external threat, those individuals are also more likely to engage in the processing of internal stimuli relevant to their fear, such as bodily states, thoughts and emotions (e.g., Spurr & Stopa, 2002).…”

Section: Social Anxietymentioning

confidence: 99%

Social anxiety and information processing biases: An integrated theoretical perspective

Peschard

Philippot

2015

Cognition and Emotion

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Models of anxiety disorders posit that information processing biases towards threat may result from an imbalance between top-down attentional control processes and bottom-up attentional processes, such that anxiety could reduce the influence of the former and increase the influence of the latter. However, researchers have recently pointed to limitations of the top-down/bottom-up terminology and outlined the additional contribution of memory processes to attention guidance. The goal of this paper is to provide bridges between recent findings from cognitive psychology and anxiety disorders research. We first provide an integrative overview of the processes influencing the content of working memory, including the availability of attentional control, and the strengths of task goals, stimulus salience, selection history and long-term memory. We then illustrate the interest of this formulation to the study of information processing biases in anxiety disorders, with a specific focus on social anxiety.

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Section: Social Anxietymentioning

confidence: 99%

Social anxiety and information processing biases: An integrated theoretical perspective

Peschard

Philippot

2015

Cognition and Emotion

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“…Because there seem to be only few studies that have taken into β consideration, and the results have been mixed (e.g., Heuer, Lange, Isaac, Rinck, & Becker, 2010;Leppänen & Hietanen, 2004), one aspect of the present dissertation was to investigate in what manner participants are answering and whether there would be a favoring of one or more face type(s). Specifically, whereas Heuer et al (2010) found a response bias, favoring happy faces, Leppänen and Hietanen (2004) did not find any favoring happy or angry over the other. The further investigation of potential re-sponse bias is important, though, because such a bias may have increased happy-superiority effects in studies in which emotion discrimination have been measured as percent correct.…”

Section: Response Bias (β)mentioning

confidence: 99%

Expecting Happy Women, Not Detecting the Angry Ones: Detection and Perceived Intensity of Facial Anger, Happiness, and Emotionality

Pixton¹

2011

PsycEXTRA Dataset

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Faces provide cues for judgments regarding the emotional state of individuals. Using signal-detection methodology and a standardized stimulus set, the overall aim of the present dissertation was to investigate the detection of emotional facial expressions (i.e., angry and happy faces) with neutral expressions as the nontarget stimuli. Study I showed a happy-superiority effect and a bias towards reporting happiness in female faces. As work progressed, questions arose regarding whether the emotional stimuli were equal with regard to perceived strength of emotion, and whether the neutral faces were perceived as neutral. To further investigate the effect of stimulus quality on the obtained findings, Study II was designed such that the facial stimuli were rated on scales of happy-sad, angry-friendly, and emotionality. Results showed that 'neutral' facial expressions were not rated as neutral, and that there was a greater perceived distance between happy and neutral faces than between angry and neutral faces. These results were used to adjust the detectability measures to compensate for the varying distances of the angry and happy stimuli from the neutral stimuli in the emotional space. The happysuperiority effect was weakened, while an angry-female disadvantage remained. However, as these results were based upon different participant groups for detection and emotional rating, Study III was designed to investigate whether the results from Studies I and II could be replicated in a design where the same participants performed both tasks. Again, the results showed the non-neutrality of 'neutral' expressions and that happiness was more easily detected than anger, as shown in general emotion as well as specific emotion detection. Taken together, the overall results of the present dissertation demonstrate a happy-superiority effect that was greater for female than male faces, that angry-female faces were the most difficult to detect, and a bias to report female faces as happy.

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“…Expression recognition skills vary in the general population (Sullivan et al, 2007;Vassalo et al, 2009;Werheid et al, 2010;Tamamiy and Hiraki, 2013) and have been associated with social adjustment, mental health and workplace performance (Carton et al, 1999;Norwicky and Duke, 1994). Specific impairments in facial expression categorization have been associated with a range of neurological and psychological problems, such as amygdala lesions (Adolphs et al, 2005), autism (Baron-Cohen, 1995), schizophrenia (Edwards et al, 2002;Penn et al, 2006), social anxiety (Heuer et al, 2010) and major depression (Joormann and Gotlieb, 2006). As a result, different methodologies aimed at improving categorization of facial expressions have been developed over time.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Given that facial expression categorization skills are impaired in people with social anxiety (Heuer et al, 2010) and major depression (Joormann and Gotlieb, 2006), it may be important to investigate whether subclinical levels of depression or anxiety in a typical population could affect expression recognition skills or the potential benefit of facial expression training.…”

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confidence: 99%

Improved categorization of subtle facial expressions modulates Late Positive Potential

Pollux

2016

Neuroscience

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Biases in facial expression recognition can be reduced successfully using feedback-based training tasks. Here we investigate with Event-Related Potentials (ERP) at which stages of stimulus processing emotion-related modulations are influenced by training. Categorization of subtle facial expressions (morphed from neutral to happy, sad or surprise) was trained with correct-response feedback on each trial. ERPs were recorded before and after training whilst participants categorized facial expressions without response feedback. Behavioural data demonstrated large improvements in categorization of subtle facial expression which transferred to new face models not used during training. ERPs were modulated by training from 450ms post-stimulus onwards, characterized by a more gradual increase in P3b/LPP amplitude as expression intensity increased. This effect was indistinguishable for faces used for training and for new faces. It was proposed that training elicited a more fine-grained analysis of facial information for all subtle expressions, resulting in improved recognition and enhanced emotional motivational salience (reflected in P3b/LPP amplitude) of faces previously categorized as expressing no emotion.

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Morphed emotional faces: Emotion detection and misinterpretation in social anxiety

Cited by 90 publications

References 26 publications

Social anxiety and information processing biases: An integrated theoretical perspective

Social anxiety and information processing biases: An integrated theoretical perspective

Expecting Happy Women, Not Detecting the Angry Ones: Detection and Perceived Intensity of Facial Anger, Happiness, and Emotionality

Improved categorization of subtle facial expressions modulates Late Positive Potential

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