Processing of Emotional Faces in Children and Adolescents With Anxiety Disorders

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to test whether children and adolescents with anxiety disorders exhibit selective processing of threatening facial expressions in a pictorial version of the emotional Stroop paradigm. Participants named the colours of filters covering images of adults and children displaying either a neutral facial expression or one displaying the emotions of anger, disgust, or happiness. A delay in naming the colour of a filter implies attentional capture by the facial expression. Anxious participants, relative to control participants, exhibited slower colour naming overall, implying greater proneness to distraction by social cues. Children exhibited longer colour-naming latencies as compared to adolescents, perhaps because young children have a limited ability to inhibit attention to distracting stimuli. Adult faces were associated with slower colour naming than were child faces, irrespective of facial expressions in both groups, possibly because adults provide especially salient cues for children and adolescents. Inconsistent with prediction, participants with anxiety disorders were not slower than healthy controls at naming the colours of filters covering threatening expressions (i.e., anger and disgust) relative to filters covering faces depicting happy or neutral expressions.

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

“…Gifford-Smith and Brownell [27] pointed out that peer acceptance is most critical in elementary school and decreases with age. Accordingly, children may process adult and child-posed faces differently, as suggested by Benoit et al [11]. Three studies did not report difference between child and adult faces when anxious and non-anxious children completed ForcedChoice (FC) tasks [22,23,25].…”

“…Concerning the extend of the biases, some studies observed a slower response for angry faces solely [12] while others reported longer RT also for happy faces [11,15] and even for neutral faces [11]. Such inconsistencies may be explained by the fact that some paradigms presented adult faces [12], mixed child and adult faces [11] or schematic faces [14,15]. When comparing child and adult faces, Benoit et al [11] reported slower colour naming, meaning enhanced interferences, for adult faces than for child faces, irrespective of facial expressions and anxiety levels.…”

“…The importance of inhibition abilities was also outlined by Hadwin et al [14] who found a correlation between high social concerns and low inhibition capabilities toward angry EFE in comparison to neutral ones, in children from 6 to 12 years. Concerning the extend of the biases, some studies observed a slower response for angry faces solely [12] while others reported longer RT also for happy faces [11,15] and even for neutral faces [11]. Such inconsistencies may be explained by the fact that some paradigms presented adult faces [12], mixed child and adult faces [11] or schematic faces [14,15].…”

“…Amongst the most typical paradigms used to examine these biases, spatial cueing paradigms are designed to evaluate selective attention, and Stroop paradigms to evaluate the abilities to control emotional interferences [8,10]. Benoit et al [11] study suggested that anxious children displayed longer response latencies to name the colour of filters placed over grayscale emotional faces, regardless of the type of anxiety, in comparison with control children. Age may play a moderator effect in the occurrence of attentional biases, as younger (7-10 years old) moderately-anxious children were described as presenting an enhanced bias for emotional faces as compared to older children (11-14 years old) in emotional Stroop and visual probe tasks [12].…”

“…Such inconsistencies may be explained by the fact that some paradigms presented adult faces [12], mixed child and adult faces [11] or schematic faces [14,15]. When comparing child and adult faces, Benoit et al [11] reported slower colour naming, meaning enhanced interferences, for adult faces than for child faces, irrespective of facial expressions and anxiety levels. Accordingly, adult expressions may be more salient and attract more attentional resources, but this hypothesis has not been tested anymore.…”