The relationships among facial emotion recognition, social skills, and quality of life

The primary aim of this study was to investigate facial emotion recognition in patients with somatoform disorders (SFD). Also of interest was the extent to which concurrent alexithymia contributed to any changes in emotion recognition accuracy. Twenty patients with SFD and twenty healthy, age, sex and education matched, controls were assessed with the Facially Expressed Emotion Labelling Test of facial emotion recognition and the 26-item Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS-26). Patients with SFD exhibited elevated alexithymia symptoms relative to healthy controls. Patients with SFD also recognized significantly fewer emotional expressions than did the healthy controls. However, the group difference in emotion recognition accuracy became nonsignificant once the influence of alexithymia was controlled for statistically. This suggests that the deficit in facial emotion recognition observed in the patients with SFD was most likely a consequence of concurrent alexithymia. Impaired facial emotion recognition observed in the patients with SFD could plausibly have a negative influence on these individuals' social functioning.

Childhood maltreatment is a significant factor affecting social cognition in schizophrenia (SCZ) patients. However, the relationship between childhood maltreatment, alexithymia, and facial emotional recognition in SCZ remains unclear. SCZ patients in stable phase (n = 90) and healthy controls (n = 47) were included according to the DSM-5 criteria. Clinical symptoms were assessed using the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale (PANSS), childhood maltreatment was evaluated using the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire (CTQ), and alexithymia was assessed using the Toronto Alexithymia Scale-20 (TAS-20) to evaluate the ability to identify, describe, and express emotions. Social cognition was assessed using the Facial Emotion Recognition Test. Our findings indicate significant differences in CTQ, TAS-20, and facial emotional recognition between the two groups, with the SCZ group showing more severe impairments. Pearson correlation analysis showed that correct facial emotion recognition was negatively correlated with childhood maltreatment and alexithymia (p < 0.05). Stepwise regression analysis further revealed that the total PANSS score, positive symptom, CTQ total score, and difficulty describing feelings negatively affected the accuracy of facial emotional recognition (p < 0.05). Patients who find it difficult to describe feelings may also have greater difficulty in recognizing facial expressions of anger. Good psychosocial functioning can mitigate the negative impact of childhood maltreatment on the severity of illness in SCZ patients. Therefore, psychotherapy that promotes personal expression is useful in the treatment of SCZ.

The Facial Feedback Hypothesis (FFH) states that facial emotion recognition is based on the imitation of facial emotional expressions and the processing of physiological feedback. In the light of limited and contradictory evidence, this hypothesis is still being debated. Therefore, in the present study, emotion recognition was tested in patients with central facial paresis after stroke. Performance in facial vs. auditory emotion recognition was assessed in patients with vs. without facial paresis. The accuracy of objective facial emotion recognition was significantly lower in patients with vs. without facial paresis and also in comparison to healthy controls. Moreover, for patients with facial paresis, the accuracy measure for facial emotion recognition was significantly worse than that for auditory emotion recognition. Finally, in patients with facial paresis, the subjective judgements of their own facial emotion recognition abilities differed strongly from their objective performances. This pattern of results demonstrates a specific deficit in facial emotion recognition in central facial paresis and thus provides support for the FFH and points out certain effects of stroke.

Background: Facial emotional recognition plays a pivotal role in human interactions and behavior. Long-term alcohol use leads to brain dysfunction that causes impairment in social cognitive abilities including facial emotional recognition. Objectives: Our study was aimed to assess the facial emotional recognition pattern in patients with alcohol dependence syndrome (ADS) and compared with that of matching controls and to study the sociodemographic and clinical correlates of facial emotional recognition in ADS. Setting and Design: This cross-sectional study was conducted at a tertiary care teaching hospital for a period of 1½ years. Fifty participants having ADS and fifty controls were included in the study. Materials and Methods: Fifty participants having ADS and fifty controls were included in the study. In the group with ADS, a semi-structured pro forma was used to collect the sociodemographic and clinical profile. Rating scales such as Severity of Alcohol Dependence Questionnaire, the Clinical Institute Withdrawal Assessment for Alcohol scale-revised, and facial emotion recognition test (FERT) were administered. For the control group, FERT was administered after collecting the data regarding sociodemographic profile and clinical variables. Results: It was observed a significant impairment in FERT scores in individuals having ADS (mean score = 19.93 ± 7.67) when compared to the control population (mean score = 32.73 ± 4.96T-test = −10.86; P &lt; 0.001). Lower scores on FERT were observed in persons with severe alcohol dependence (one-way ANOVA = 41.79, P &lt; 0.001). Post hoc Tukey testing showed the difference between groups having moderate-to-severe dependence (P &lt; 0.001) and mild-to-severe dependence (P &lt; 0.001). Conclusions: Significant impairment in facial emotional recognition skills were observed in patients having ADS. The subjects in ADS group were able to identify happy and angry emotions better while facing difficulties in identifying sad and fear full stimulus.

ObjectiveTo understand the facial emotion recognition of male veterans with chronic schizophrenia and the relationship between facial emotion recognition and interpersonal communication to provide a reference for designing social skills training programmes.MethodFifty-six eligible male patients with chronic schizophrenia who were admitted to our hospital from October 2020 to April 2021 were selected, and 24 healthy people were selected as controls. Facial emotion recognition, social communication skills and self-perceived interpersonal disturbance were assessed using a facial emotion recognition stimulus manual, the Social Skills Checklist (SSC) and the Interpersonal Relationship Integrative Diagnostic Scale (IRIDS). Disease status was assessed using the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale.ResultsBoth the control group and the patient group had the highest recognition accuracy for neutral faces. The recognition rate for neutral expression was higher in the control group than in the patient group (p = 0.008). The rate of neutral expressions identified as happiness was higher in the patient group than in the control group (p = 0.001). The identification of anger as happiness was higher in the control group than in the patient group (p = 0.026), and the pattern of misidentification was similar between the control group and the patient group. The accuracy of facial emotion recognition was negatively associated with the age of onset (p < 0.05). The recognition accuracy for happiness was negatively associated with negative symptoms, general pathological symptoms and total scale scores (p < 0.05). The total score for expression recognition was negatively associated with the negative symptom subscale scores (p < 0.05), and there was no correlation between expression recognition and positive symptoms (p > 0.05). The recognition accuracy for happiness was negatively correlated with the IRIDS conversation factor (p < 0.05). The recognition accuracy for happiness and anger and the total scores for facial emotion recognition were negatively correlated with the SSC subscale score and the total score (p < 0.05 and p < 0.01, respectively). The main influencing factors on facial emotion recognition were the SSC total score (p < 0.001) and the positive factor score (p = 0.039).ConclusionVeterans with chronic schizophrenia have facial emotion recognition impairments affected by negative symptoms. There is a correlation between facial emotion recognition and interpersonal communication.Highlights1. There are extensive facial expression recognition disorders in schizophrenia.2. The pattern of misidentification was similar in both the control group and the patient group, with the tendency for happiness to be identified as a neutral emotion, anger as happiness, and fear as neutral emotion and anger.3. Based on the comprehensive assessment of social cognitive impairment in patients with schizophrenia, prospective studies of standardised interventions are designed to provide support for clinical practice.

BackgroundFacial emotion recognition depends on cortical and subcortical networks. HIV infection of the central nervous system can damage these networks, leading to impaired facial emotion recognition.MethodsWe performed a cross-sectional single cohort study consecutively enrolling HIV + subjects during routine outpatient visits. Age, gender and education-matched HIV-negative healthy individuals were also selected. Subjects were submitted to a Facial Emotion Recognition Test, which assesses the ability to recognize six basic emotions (disgust, anger, fear, happiness, surprise, sadness). The score for each emotion and a global score (obtained by summing scores for each emotion) were analyzed. General cognitive status of patients was also assessed.ResultsA total of 49 HIV + and 20 HIV − subjects were enrolled. On the Facial Emotion Recognition Test, ANOVA revealed a significantly lower performance of HIV + subjects than healthy controls in recognizing fear. Moreover, fear facial emotion recognition was directly correlated with Immediate Recall of Rey Words. The lower the patients’ neurocognitive performance the less accurate they were in recognizing happiness. AIDS-defining events were negatively related to the correct recognition of happiness.ConclusionsFear recognition deficit in HIV + patients might be related to the impaired function of neural networks in the frontostriatal system. AIDS events, including non-neurological ones, may have a negative effect on this system. Inclusion of an emotion recognition test in the neuropsychological test battery could help clinicians during the long term management of HIV-infected patients, to better understand the cognitive mechanisms involved in the reduction of emotion recognition ability and the impact of this impairment on daily life.

Children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) symptoms often experience social and emotional problems. Impaired facial emotion recognition has been suggested as a possible underlying mechanism, although impairments may depend on the type and intensity of emotions. We investigated facial emotion recognition in children with (subthreshold) ADHD and controls using a novel task with children’s faces of emotional expressions varying in type and intensity. We further investigated associations between emotion recognition accuracy and social and emotional problems in the ADHD group. 83 children displaying ADHD symptoms and 30 controls (6–12 years) completed the Morphed Facial Emotion Recognition Task (MFERT). The MFERT assesses emotion recognition accuracy on four emotions using five expression intensity levels. Teachers and parents rated social and emotional problems on the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire. Repeated measures analysis of variance revealed that the ADHD group showed poorer emotion recognition accuracy compared to controls across emotions (small effect). The significant group by expression intensity interaction (small effect) showed that the increase in accuracy with increasing expression intensity was smaller in the ADHD group compared to controls. Multiple regression analyses within the ADHD group showed that emotion recognition accuracy was inversely related to social and emotional problems, but not prosocial behavior. Not only children with an ADHD diagnosis, but also children with subthreshold ADHD experience impairments in facial emotion recognition. This impairment is predictive for social and emotional problems, which may suggest that emotion recognition may contribute to the development of social and emotional problems in these children.

With the rapid development of artificial intelligence and machine learning in recent years, emotion recognition has gradually become an important research topic. Emotion recognition in one direction has a good research foundation after long-term development, and from multiple directions, more effective information can be extracted, thereby improving the accuracy of emotion recognition. This paper analyzes from the perspective of emotional recognition of physiological signals such as brainwave signals and facial emotion recognition, respectively, preprocessing, feature extraction, SVM feature classification, LSTM combined with convolutional neural network emotion recognition for the acquired signals. And the accuracy of mixed-modal emotion recognition is compared. Compared with single facial expression emotion recognition, mixed-modal emotion recognition extracts more feature information and has a higher accuracy.

The Role of Oxytocin in Older Adults’ Facial Emotion Recognition Difficulties

A large body of evidence suggests that several aspects of face processing are impaired in autism and that this impairment might be hereditary. This study was aimed at assessing facial emotion recognition in parents of children with autism and its associations with a functional polymorphism of the serotonin transporter (5HTTLPR). We evaluated 40 parents of children with autism and 41 healthy controls. All participants were administered the Penn Emotion Recognition Test (ER40) and were genotyped for 5HTTLPR. Our study showed that parents of children with autism performed worse in the facial emotion recognition test than controls. Analyses of error patterns showed that parents of children with autism over-attributed neutral to emotional faces. We found evidence that 5HTTLPR polymorphism did not influence the performance in the Penn Emotion Recognition Test, but that it may determine different error patterns. Facial emotion recognition deficits are more common in first-degree relatives of autistic patients than in the general population, suggesting that facial emotion recognition is a candidate endophenotype for autism.

Expression recognition or Emotional state recognition using holistic and feature information is the vital step in Driver Assistance System. Many researchers have work on Facial Gesture or Emotion recognition independently. The purpose of the present paper is to deal with Simultaneous Facial Gesture tracking and Emotion recognition with Soft Computing tool like Fuzzy rule based system (FBS). In Human Centered Transportation large number of road accidents took place due to drowsiness or bad mood of the driver. The system proposed in this paper take into account both the Facial Gesture tracking and Emotion recognition so that if there is any sign of less attentiveness of the driver or driver's fatigue the car will be switch to automatic mode. A novel fuzzy system is created, whose rules is being defined through analysis of Facial Gesture variations. The idea behind this paper is to detect Facial Gesture by detecting the motion of eyes & lips along with classification of different facial expressions into one of the four basic human emotions, viz. happy, anger, sad, and surprise with fuzzy rule based system for better system performance. The given system proposes 91.66% accuracy for Facial Gesture detection & 90% accuracy for Emotion recognition while using Simultaneous Facial Gesture detection and Emotion recognition it provides 94.58% accuracy.

Research suggests that women with polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) are more likely to suffer from mental health disorders, emotional distress, and have altered hormone profiles (e.g., higher androgens). Past research suggests facial emotion processing is affected by hormones (e.g., androgens), mental health-related disorders, and may be altered in PCOS. The present study examined whether facial emotion recognition (FER) differs between women with and without PCOS symptoms. Observational case-control design. Three groups of participants (women with provisional PCOS, women without PCOS, and men; N = 178) completed a FER task that involved identifying emotions (anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, surprise, or neutral) in images of emotional faces. Overall emotion recognition and emotion-specific accuracy were examined. PCOS symptom severity and provisional diagnoses were also assessed in women via self-report measures, including the polycystic ovary syndrome questionnaire. Women with provisional PCOS had significantly lower emotion recognition accuracy than those without PCOS, and emotion-specific differences were found for fear and disgust. A significant linear effect also emerged for overall FER, revealing men as the least accurate, followed by women with provisional PCOS, and then women without PCOS. The results suggest that women with PCOS may have difficulty with emotion recognition, especially fear and disgust. The sex difference in emotion recognition was in line with previous research. These findings are consistent with the theory that androgens affect emotion recognition and suggest implications for PCOS symptoms on women's emotional well-being and socioemotional functioning.

Facial emotion recognition ability in psychiatrists, psychologist and psychological counselors

ABSTRACT.Emotion recognition is a key component of social cognition. Symptoms of depression and anxiety may modulate this ability.Objective: To investigate the effect of subclinical depressive and anxiety symptoms on performance in a facial emotion recognition test. Methods: A total of 203 participants (109 females and 94 males; mean age 48.8±19 years; mean schooling 9.3±5.1 years) without current or past history of psychiatric or neurological disorders were enrolled. None had abnormal scores on the anxiety or depression subscales of the Hospital Anxiety and Depression (HAD) Scale. All participants (N=203) underwent the Mini-Mental State Exam (MMSE) and the Facial Emotion Recognition Test (FERT), which assesses recognition of: anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, surprise, and neutral expressions. Multivariate analyses included HAD-Anxiety, HAD-Depression, MMSE, age, and schooling as covariates. Results: Age, schooling, and MMSE were significantly correlated with FERT scores. A significant negative correlation was found between FERT-Total and HAD-Depression (r=-0.22; p<0.002), and between FERT-Fear and HAD-Depression (r=-0.31; p<0.0001). No other significant correlations were observed between FERT scores and psychiatric measures. Anxiety and depression scores were not retained in the final multivariate models, except for a negative correlation between HAD-Anxiety and FERT-Fear. Conclusion: Subclinical anxious and depressive symptoms have a modest effect on FERT.

The most frequently used measures of facial emotion recognition (FER) are insufficiently comprehensive, reliable, valid, and efficient; moreover, the impact of gender on scoring has not been controlled. To develop a computerized adaptive test of FER for adults with schizophrenia. First, we selected photographs from a published database. Second, items that fitted well to a Rasch model were used to form the item bank. Third and last, we determined the best administration mode for prospective users to achieve both high reliability and efficiency. Psychiatric hospitals and the community. Adults living with schizophrenia (n = 351) and adults without diagnosed mental illness (n = 101). After removal of misfit items (infit or outfit ≥1.4), the remaining 165 items were selected to form an item bank. Among them, 39 showed severe gender bias, so the item difficulties were adjusted accordingly. On the basis of the item bank, two administration modes were recommended for prospective users. The reliable mode required approximately 128 items (nearly 20 min) to achieve reliability (.72-.81), similar to that of the entire item bank. The efficient mode required approximately 73 items (approximate 11 min) to provide acceptable reliability (.69-.73) for the seven domain scores. Our newly developed measure provides comprehensive, valid, and unbiased (to examinees' gender) assessments of FER in adults living with schizophrenia. In addition, the administration modes can be flexibly changed to optimize the reliability or efficiency for prospective users. This newly developed FER measure can help occupational therapists identify deficits in recognizing specific basic emotions and plan corresponding interventions to manage the impact on their clients' social functions.