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Face masks are now worn frequently to reduce the spreading of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. Their health benefits are undisputable, but covering the lower half of one's face also makes it harder for others to recognize facial expressions of emotions. Three experiments were conducted to determine how strongly the recognition of different facial expressions is impaired by masks, and which emotions are confused with each other. In each experiment, participants had to recognize facial expressions of happiness, sadness, anger, surprise, fear, and disgust, as well as a neutral expression, displayed by male and female actors of the Radboud Faces Database. On half of the 168 trials, the lower part of the face was covered by a face mask. In all experiments, facial emotion recognition (FER) was about 20% worse for masked faces than for unmasked ones (68% correct vs. 88%). The impairment was largest for disgust, followed by fear, surprise, sadness, and happiness. It was not significant for anger and the neutral expression. As predicted, participants frequently confused emotions that share activation of the visible muscles in the upper half of the face. In addition, they displayed response biases in these confusions: They frequently misinterpreted disgust as anger, fear as surprise, and sadness as neutral, whereas the opposite confusions were less frequent. We conclude that face masks do indeed cause a marked impairment of FER and that a person perceived as angry, surprised, or neutral may actually be disgusted, fearful, or sad, respectively. This may lead to misunderstandings, confusions, and inadequate reactions by the perceivers.

Heightened attention towards negative information is characteristic of depression. Evidence is emerging for a negative attentional bias in Autism spectrum disorder (ASD), perhaps driven by the high comorbidity between ASD and depression. We investigated whether ASD is characterised by a negative attentional bias and whether this can be explained by comorbid (sub) clinical depression. Participants (n = 116) with current (CD) or remitted depression (RD) and/or ASD, and 64 controls viewed positively and negatively valenced (non-)social pictures. Groups were compared on three components of visual attention using linear mixed models. Both CD individuals with and without ASD, but not remitted depressed and never-depressed ASD individuals showed a negative bias, suggesting that negative attentional bias might be a depressive state-specific marker for depression in ASD.

To draw valid and reliable conclusions from child studies involving facial expressions, well-controlled and validated (child) facial stimuli are necessary. The current study is the first to validate the facial emotional expressions of child models in school-aged children. In this study, we validated the Radboud Faces Database child models in a large sample of children (N = 547; 256 boys) aged between 8 and 12. In addition, associated validation measures such as valence, clarity, and model attractiveness were examined. Overall, the results indicated that children were able to accurately identify the emotional expressions on the child faces in approximately 70% of the cases. The highest accuracy rates were found for "happiness," whereas "contempt" received the lowest accuracy scores. Children confused the emotions "fear" and "surprise," and the emotions "contempt" and "neutral" with one another. Ratings of all facial stimuli are available (https://osf.io/7srgw/) and can be used to select appropriate stimuli to investigate the processing of children's facial emotional expressions.

Heightened attention towards negative information is characteristic of depression. Evidence is emerging for a negative attentional bias in Autism spectrum disorder (ASD), perhaps driven by the high comorbidity between ASD and depression. We investigated whether ASD is characterised by a negative attentional bias and whether this can be explained by comorbid (sub) clinical depression. Participants (n = 116) with current (CD) or remitted depression (RD) and/or ASD, and 64 controls viewed positively and negatively valenced (non-)social pictures. Groups were compared on three components of visual attention using linear mixed models. Both CD individuals with and without ASD, but not remitted depressed and never-depressed ASD individuals showed a negative bias, suggesting that negative attentional bias might be a depressive state-specific marker for depression in ASD., Author(s): M. Annemiek Bergman [sup.1] [sup.2] , Janna N. Vrijsen [sup.1] [sup.2] [sup.3] , Mike Rinck [sup.4] , Iris van Oostrom [sup.5] , Cornelis C. Kan [sup.1] , Rose M. [...]

Introduction: Abstinence rates after inpatient treatment for alcohol use disorder (AUD) are modest (1-year rate around 50%). One promising approach is to re-train the automatically activated action tendency to approach alcohol-related stimuli (alcohol-approach bias) in AUD patients, as add-on to regular treatment. As efficacy has been demonstrated in well-controlled randomized controlled trials, the important next step is to add alcohol-approach-bias modification (alcohol-ApBM) to varieties of existing treatments for AUD. Therefore, this prospective, multicenter implementation-RCT examined whether adding alcohol-ApBM to regular treatments (various abstinence-oriented treatments including both individual and group-based interventions) would significantly increase abstinence rates compared to receiving regular treatment only, in a variety of naturalistic settings with different therapeutic approaches. Methods: A total of 1,586 AUD inpatients from 9 German rehabilitation clinics were randomly assigned to receive either ApBM in addition to regular treatment or not. Training satisfaction of patients and therapists was measured after training. Success rates were determined at 3, 6, and 12 months post-treatment. Results: Return rates of the post-treatment assessments varied greatly between clinics, often being low (18–76%). Nevertheless, ApBM significantly increased success rates after 3 months. After 6 and 12 months, the differences were not significant. ApBM was evaluated mostly positively by patients and therapists. Discussion/Conclusion: ApBM was an effective add-on to regular treatment of AUD at 3 months follow-up, across a variety of AUD treatment settings. However, low return rates for the clinical outcomes reduced the effect size of ApBM considerably. The application of ApBM proved feasible in varying clinical settings, offering the opportunity to modify automatic processes and to promote abstinence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social anxiety (SA) is associated with difficulties in positively updating negative social information when new information and feedback about chosen options (actual decisions) are received. However, it is unclear whether this difficulty persists when hidden information regarding unchosen options is explicitly presented. The aim of the current study was to address this gap. Participants (Mturk; n = 191) completed a two-phases novel task. In the task, participants chose to approach or avoid people, represented by images of faces. During the initial (learning) phase, participants learned, in a probabilistic context, which people are associated with negative outcomes and should be avoided, and which are associated with positive outcomes and should be approached. During the subsequent updating phase, people previously associated with negative outcomes became associated with positive outcomes and vice versa. Importantly, participants received feedback not only on their approach (actual) decisions, but also on their avoidance (counter-factual) decisions (e.g., approaching this person would have been beneficial). The results revealed that even when the consequences of avoidance were explicitly presented, SA was associated with difficulty in positive updating of social information. The findings support the view that biased updating of social information is a change-resistant mechanism that may underlie the maintenance of SA. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]