Emotion Recognition Deficits in Pediatric Anxiety Disorders: Implications for Amygdala Research

Easter, Josh; McClure, Erin B.; Monk, Christopher S.; Dhanani, M.; Hodgdon, Hilary; Leibenluft, Ellen; Charney, Dennis S.; Pine, Daniel S.; Ernst, Monique

doi:10.1089/cap.2005.15.563

Cited by 65 publications

(59 citation statements)

References 59 publications

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“…In a pilot study (separate sample), MAAC helped clinicians engage children in discussions of their feelings and showed promise in distinguishing children with anxiety disorders from nonanxious children [18]; children with anxiety disorders explored fewer emotions spontaneously, rated positive emotions lower, and visited positive emotions later. These findings are consistent with literature reporting heightened caution and heightened attention to threatening stimuli (in this case, negative emotions) in anxious individuals [19,20].…”

Section: Introductionsupporting

confidence: 92%

Mood assessment via animated characters: An instrument to access and evaluate emotions in young children

Manassis¹,

Mendlowitz²,

Dupuis³

et al. 2013

OJPsych

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Section: Introductionsupporting

confidence: 92%

Mood assessment via animated characters: An instrument to access and evaluate emotions in young children

Manassis¹,

Mendlowitz²,

Dupuis³

et al. 2013

OJPsych

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“…This finding supported a different triggering factor of threat perception, that is to say a differential source of threat for each group. These results are consistent with Easter et al [28] and Jarros et al [24] studies, which showed poorest performances in adult EFE recognition in anxious groups (GAD, SAD, SP).…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 92%

“…Once again, the difference between these two studies may be attributed to anxiety types recruited since Easter et al [28] selected anxious children suffering from various anxiety disorders (GAD, SAD, SP) whereas Simonian et al [26] participants were suffering from These results should be considered from the child's perspective.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…As children aged less than 9 are less efficient in inhibiting emotional information [32], we expected, in all participants, better and faster identification in the explicit condition (identifying emotion) than the implicit ones (identifying age and gender) and we hypothesised that all children should identify anger faster than joy [33]. We expected anxious children, in comparison with the control group, to be more accurate in identifying child EFE than adult ones [28], and to identify faster angry faces, but to answer slower for angry faces in the implicit condition (identifying age and gender) because of the interference elicited by threat.…”

Section: Childhood 5%mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Three studies did not report difference between child and adult faces when anxious and non-anxious children completed ForcedChoice (FC) tasks [22,23,25]. However, Easter et al [28] revealed higher error rates for adult faces than child faces for both anxious (GAD, SAD, SP) and non-anxious youths performing in EFE identification task (FC: anger, fear, joy, sadness). The two groups did not differ on child faces accuracy, whereas the experimental group showed poorer performance on adult faces accuracy than the control group.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Processing of Emotional Facial Expressions (EFE) in Paediatric Anxiety: Are Child Faces More Noteworthy than Adult Faces?

Bouragui¹

2017

Acta Psychopathol

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Anxiety is characterized by an increased attention toward threatening information. Anxious adults displayed such attentional biases in tasks involving both implicit and explicit evaluation of Emotional Facial Expressions (EFE). This study investigated whether anxiety can disturb these two levels of information processing in children processing emotional faces. Second, we also intended to examine whether anxious children exhibit comparable responses to adult and child EFE, as children are particularly confronted to peers' faces in their daily life. To this aims, a sample of children with high levels of anxiety on SCARED and STAI-C scales were compared to healthy children ranging in age from 6 to 9 years. They performed a forcedchoice paradigm, consisting in judging the age (adult/child), the gender (male/ female) and the emotion (anger/happiness) of faces presented one by one on a screen. For each condition, correct answers rates (CA) and Reaction Time (RT) were examined for anxious and non-anxious groups. Results showed that children performed generally more accurately for judging emotion as compared to age or gender. However, this effect was moderated by the face's categories, as all children answered with higher accuracy to adult faces in the gender condition, and to children faces in the age condition, meaning they identify more accurately their peers but the sexual characters are more distinguishable on adult faces. All participants were more efficient to identify anger than happiness, but healthy children answered faster to adult angry faces in all conditions, while anxious children did not show this effect and processed more accurately anger on children faces as compared to adult ones. These results suggest that anxious children paid more attention to their peers' disapproval, while non-anxious children focused rather on adults' disapprobation. Further research might examine the role of the social standing and need of social approval in paediatric anxiety.

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The Relationship Between Attentional Bias and Anxiety in Children and Adolescents With Autism Spectrum Disorders

et al. 2013

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Young people with an autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are more likely to have heightened levels of anxiety compared with their typically developing (non-ASD) peers. The reasons for this are poorly understood, and there has been little research investigating the cognitive correlates of anxiety in individuals with ASD. Typically developing youth with anxiety disorders have frequently been found to show an attentional bias toward threatening information. In this study, we examined whether such a bias was also found in young people with ASD and anxiety symptoms. The protocol utilized two versions of the dot-probe paradigm, the first with emotional faces and the second with emotional words. Participants comprised 38 boys with an ASD and 41 typically developing controls aged 10-16 years of age. Those with an ASD displayed higher levels of parent- and child-rated anxiety (both P < 0.001) and depression (P < 0.001) compared with controls. However, there were no significant group differences in attentional bias scores and no significant relationship between anxiety and attentional bias in either the face or word tasks, for either group. Our findings suggest that, for young people with ASD, unlike non-ASD individuals with an anxiety disorder, high levels of anxiety may not be associated with attentional bias to threat. This may indicate that anxiety in ASD has different cognitive correlates from anxiety in the typically developing population. Further conclusions, study limitations, and future directions are discussed.

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Emotion Recognition Deficits in Pediatric Anxiety Disorders: Implications for Amygdala Research

Abstract: As this study was conducted in a sample undergoing a neuroimaging investigation of amygdala integrity, future analyses will examine associations among amygdala function, clinical anxiety, and face-recognition abilities.

Cited by 65 publications

References 59 publications

Mood assessment via animated characters: An instrument to access and evaluate emotions in young children

Mood assessment via animated characters: An instrument to access and evaluate emotions in young children

Processing of Emotional Facial Expressions (EFE) in Paediatric Anxiety: Are Child Faces More Noteworthy than Adult Faces?

The Relationship Between Attentional Bias and Anxiety in Children and Adolescents With Autism Spectrum Disorders

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