Mediterranean Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience - CNRS, 31, Chemin Joseph Aiguier, 13402 Marseille cedex 20, France.
Neuropsychologia. 2010 Mar;48(4):1071-8. doi: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2009.12.006. Epub 2009 Dec 11.
The detection of social threat is crucial for adaptive behaviour. Previous studies have shown that angry faces capture attention and are processed more efficiently than happy faces. While this anger superiority effect has been found in typical and atypical development, it is unknown whether it exists in individuals with Williams syndrome (WS), who show reduced social fear and atypical sociability. In this study, children with WS searched for angry or happy target faces surrounded by 2, 5 or 8 distracters (happy or angry faces, respectively). Performance was compared to that of mental age-matched controls. Results revealed no group differences for happy faces, however for angry faces, the WS, but not the control group, showed a significant performance decrease for the 8-distracters condition, indicating the absence of an anger superiority effect, in good agreement with evidence for abnormal structure and function in brain areas for social threat processing in WS.
社会威胁的检测对于适应性行为至关重要。先前的研究表明，愤怒的面孔比快乐的面孔更能吸引注意力，并且处理得更快。虽然在典型和非典型发育中都发现了这种愤怒优势效应，但尚不清楚患有威廉姆斯综合征（WS）的个体是否存在这种效应，因为 WS 患者表现出社交恐惧减少和社交行为异常。在这项研究中，患有 WS 的儿童在 2、5 或 8 个干扰物（分别为快乐或愤怒的面孔）周围搜索愤怒或快乐的目标面孔。将表现与智力年龄匹配的对照组进行比较。结果显示，两组在快乐面孔上没有差异，但是在愤怒面孔上，WS 组而不是对照组在 8 个干扰物条件下表现出显著的下降，表明没有愤怒优势效应，这与 WS 患者在处理社会威胁的大脑区域中存在结构和功能异常的证据一致。
