Superior facial emotion recognition in adolescents with anorexia nervosa – A replication study

Sfärlea, Anca ; Buhl, Christina; Lukas, Linda und Schulte‐Körne, Gerd (2024): Superior facial emotion recognition in adolescents with anorexia nervosa – A replication study. In: European Eating Disorders Review, Bd. 32, Nr. 5: S. 943-951

Abstract

Objective Anorexia nervosa (AN) has been associated with alterations in the processing of socio-emotional information, including impairments in the recognition of emotions in other people's faces. However, adolescents with AN might not show the impairments found in adult patients. The present study investigated facial emotion recognition in adolescents with AN, aiming to replicate our previous results of superior emotion recognition abilities in adolescents with AN compared to adolescents without mental disorders.

Method Adolescent girls (12–18 years) with AN (n = 33) were compared to girls without mental disorders (n = 41). Participants completed one task requiring identification of emotions (happy, sad, afraid, angry, neutral) in faces and one control task.

Results As expected, adolescents with AN showed superior emotion recognition, with higher accuracy rates specifically for afraid faces.

Conclusion This is the first study replicating previous results on basic emotion recognition in adolescents with AN using (almost) the same methodology. The results suggest that, in contrast to adults, adolescents with AN do not show impairments in facial emotion recognition. The impairments may arise in the longer course of the illness, however, longitudinal studies are necessary to confirm this assumption.

Highlights

Adolescent girls with anorexia nervosa (AN) did not show impairments in facial emotion recognition compared to adolescents girls with no mental disorders

On the contrary, adolescent with AN showed superior emotion recognition specifically for afraid faces (and a trend for sad faces)

The results replicate those of a previous study and suggest that emotion recognition impairments may arise with prolonged illness duration

• Dokumententyp: Zeitschriftenartikel
• Fakultät: Medizin > Klinikum der LMU München > Klinik und Poliklinik für Kinder- und Jugendpsychiatrie, Psychosomatik und Psychotherapie
• Themengebiete: 600 Technik, Medizin, angewandte Wissenschaften > 610 Medizin und Gesundheit
• ISSN: 1072-4133
• Sprache: Englisch