University College London, London, UK.
Scand J Psychol. 2010 Aug;51(4):285-9. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-9450.2009.00797.x. Epub 2010 Jan 3.
Theory of mind ability has been associated with performance in interpersonal interactions and has been found to influence aspects such as emotion recognition, social competence, and social anxiety. Being able to attribute mental states to others requires attention to subtle communication cues such as facial emotional expressions. Decoding and interpreting emotions expressed by the face, especially those with negative valence, are essential skills to successful social interaction. The current study explored the association between theory of mind skills and attentional bias to facial emotional expressions. According to the study hypothesis, individuals with poor theory of mind skills showed preferential attention to negative faces over both non-negative faces and neutral objects. Tentative explanations for the findings are offered emphasizing the potential adaptive role of vigilance for threat as a way of allocating a limited capacity to interpret others' mental states to obtain as much information as possible about potential danger in the social environment.
心理理论能力与人际互动表现相关联，并且已经发现它会影响情绪识别、社交能力和社交焦虑等方面。能够将心理状态归因于他人需要关注微妙的沟通线索，例如面部表情。解码和解释面部表达的情绪，尤其是那些带有负面情绪的表情，是成功社交互动的重要技能。本研究探讨了心理理论技能与对面部情绪表达的注意力偏向之间的关联。根据研究假设，心理理论技能差的个体表现出对负面面孔的偏好注意，而不是非负面面孔和中性物体。研究结果提供了一些试探性的解释，强调了对威胁的警惕作为一种分配能力的潜在适应性，以便尽可能多地从社交环境中的潜在危险中获取有关他人心理状态的信息。
