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Emotion Recognition Biases in Alcohol Use Disorder
Author(s) -
Freeman Clara R.,
Wiers Corinde E.,
Sloan Matthew E.,
Zehra Amna,
Ramirez Veronica,
Wang GeneJack,
Volkow Nora D.
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
alcoholism: clinical and experimental research
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.267
H-Index - 153
eISSN - 1530-0277
pISSN - 0145-6008
DOI - 10.1111/acer.13802
Subject(s) - disgust , anger , psychology , sadness , alcohol use disorder , anxiety , mood , facial expression , clinical psychology , cognition , happiness , emotional expression , developmental psychology , psychiatry , alcohol , social psychology , biochemistry , chemistry , communication
Background Alcohol use disorder ( AUD ) has been associated with impairments in cognitive and emotional function, including difficulty identifying emotional facial expressions. However, it is unclear whether these deficits are associated with alcohol consumption or related anxious and depressive symptoms. Methods We compared the recognition of emotional faces expressing happiness, surprise, sadness, fear, anger, and disgust in 19 AUD participants and 19 healthy volunteers using the Cambridge Neuropsychological Test Automated Battery Emotion Recognition Task. We analyzed group differences in response latency, accuracy, and misidentification patterns (as defined by the tendency to mislabel facial expressions as exhibiting specific emotions). To assess whether misidentification patterns were associated with drinking severity, we also examined associations with alcohol consumption over the past 90 days. Results There were no differences in response latency or accuracy between groups. However, there were group differences in misidentification patterns. While controls tended to misidentify emotional expressions as happy, those with AUD tended to misidentify expressions as angry or disgusted. In AUD participants, the degree to which individuals were biased toward anger or disgust was positively correlated with the number of drinks they consumed in the past 90 days but was not associated with depression or anxiety scores. Conclusions Our findings suggest that individuals with AUD have a bias toward misidentifying emotional facial expressions as hostile, which is not mediated by associated mood changes. This provides further evidence of disrupted social cognition in AUD .