Impaired emotional facial expression decoding in alcoholism is also present for emotional prosody and body postures.
OBJECTIVE
Emotional facial expression (EFE) decoding impairment has been repeatedly reported in alcoholism (e.g. Philippot et al., 1999). Nevertheless, several questions are still under debate concerning this alteration, notably its generalization to other emotional stimuli and its variation according to the emotional valence of stimuli.


METHODS
Eighteen recently detoxified alcoholic subjects and 18 matched controls performed a decoding test consisting in emotional intensity ratings on various stimuli (faces, voices, body postures and written scenarios) depicting different emotions (anger, fear, happiness, neutral, sadness). Perceived threat and difficulty were also assessed for each stimulus.


RESULTS
Alcoholic individuals had a preserved decoding performance for happiness stimuli, but alcoholism was associated with an underestimation of sadness and fear, and with a general overestimation of anger. More importantly, these decoding impairments were observed for faces, voices and postures but not for written scenarios.


CONCLUSIONS
We observed for the first time a generalized emotional decoding impairment in alcoholism, as this impairment is present not only for faces but also for other visual (i.e. body postures) and auditory stimuli. Moreover, we report that this alteration (1) is mainly indexed by an overestimation of anger and (2) cannot be explained by an 'affect labelling' impairment, as the semantic comprehension of written emotional scenarios is preserved. Fundamental and clinical implications are discussed.
Maurage
Pierre
P
Department of Psychology, Catholic University of Louvain, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium. pierre.maurage@uclouvain.be
Campanella
Salvatore
S
Philippot
Pierre
P
Charest
Ian
I
Martin
Sophie
S
de Timary
Philippe
P
D000293:Adolescent; D000339:Affect; D000437:Alcoholism / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000453:epidemiology*; D000786:Anger; D001007:Anxiety / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000453:epidemiology / Q000523:psychology; D001307:Auditory Perception; D003863:Depression / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000453:epidemiology / Q000523:psychology; D039721:Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders; D019260:Expressed Emotion; D005145:Face; D005149:Facial Expression; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007600:Judgment; D008297:Male; D010468:Perceptual Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000453:epidemiology*; D011187:Posture; D012660:Semantics; D012720:Severity of Illness Index; D014796:Visual Perception