Identificação da emoção facial na ansiedade social

Abstract

Emotional recognition seems to be an important component of our nonverbal communication system, essential for adaptation and effectiveness in interpersonal relationships. Different theorists have proposed that individuals with different psychopathologies, particularly in both mood and social anxiety disorders, would present selective attention to emotionally negative facial stimuli (eg, anger, fear, sadness), being less sensitive to positive ones (eg, cheerful faces). The present study aimed to investigate the identification of emotional faces (particularly joy, anger, fear, sadness and neutrality); the study addresses individuals with social anxiety, comparing their performance of identifying emotions with other participants who do not have this particular disorder. Nineteen undergraduate students with social anxiety (six) and without (19) participated. The designation of the participants in the groups depended on a psych diagnostic evaluation, implemented in Phase 1 by psychologists in trainees, under the supervision of the counselor. During the evaluation, the following instruments were applied: 1) PROMIS-Level 1; 2) PROMIS - Level 2 anxiety; 3) Liebowitz Social Phobia Scale. For both groups, a single experimental computerized experimental session was implemented and controlled by computer. Twenty (20) visual stimuli in the form of faces with emotional expressions were used during the session: five different facial expressions of emotion (joy, sadness, anger, fear and neutral) with four different actors. 120 experimental attempts provided three different tasks of conditional discrimination, namely: 1) Appointment (indicate the correct naming of a facial expression, 20 attempts); 2) Identification with four 4 photos that would best be described by the emotion available in the model; 20 attempts. In the last 80 attempts, the participant should identify facial expression by comparing two distinct faces of emotions; the negative comparison stimulus could be lighthearted or neutral. The results seem to indicate that individuals with social anxiety seem to respond promptly to fear. Some considerations were examined with reference to the relation between 1) number of care disorders and the effect on accuracy and latency; and, 2) some methodological conditions to be addressed in future research.