Impaired identification of fearful faces in Generalised Social Phobia.
BACKGROUND
Cognitive models and interventions for anxiety assume that socially anxious individuals interpret ambiguous social information in a threatening manner. However, experimental evidence for this hypothesised cognitive bias is mixed. The present study is novel in using a signal detection approach to clarify whether Generalised Social Phobia (GSP) is associated with biased identification of emotionally ambiguous facial expressions.


METHODS
16 patients with GSP and 17 non-anxious volunteers classified ambiguous emotional facial expressions, with each face reflecting a blend of two emotions: angry-happy, fearful-happy and fearful-angry. Discrimination accuracy and response criterion were assessed.


RESULTS
Patients with GSP showed significantly poorer discrimination of ambiguous emotional facial expressions that contained an element of fear (i.e., fearful-happy and fearful-angry expressions), compared to non-anxious controls. The groups did not significantly differ in discrimination of faces which lacked fear content (i.e., angry-happy blend), or on measures of response criterion.


CONCLUSIONS
Small sample size, coexisting depressive symptoms.


CONCLUSIONS
Findings indicate a selective impairment in fear identification in GSP. Results are discussed with reference to neurocognitive models of anxiety, and research on serotonergic modulation of emotional face processing.
Garner
Matthew
M
Division of Clinical Neuroscience, School of Medicine, University of Southampton, SO17 1BJ, United Kingdom.m.j.garner@soton.ac.uk
Baldwin
David S
DS
Bradley
Brendan P
BP
Mogg
Karin
K
D000328:Adult; D000786:Anger; D004192:Discrimination, Psychological; D005149:Facial Expression; D005239:Fear / Q000523:psychology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual; D010698:Phobic Disorders / Q000523:psychology*; D010775:Photic Stimulation / Q000379:methods