Liu Xinyang, Hildebrandt Andrea, Recio Guillermo, Sommer Werner, Cai Xinxia, Wilhelm Oliver
State Key Laboratory of Transducer Technology, Institute of Electronics, Chinese Academy of SciencesBeijing, China.
University of Chinese Academy of SciencesBeijing, China.
Front Behav Neurosci. 2017 Aug 10;11:149. doi: 10.3389/fnbeh.2017.00149. eCollection 2017.
Facial identity and facial expression processing are crucial socio-emotional abilities but seem to show only limited psychometric uniqueness when the processing speed is considered in easy tasks. We applied a comprehensive measurement of processing speed and contrasted performance specificity in socio-emotional, social and non-social stimuli from an individual differences perspective. Performance in a multivariate task battery could be best modeled by a general speed factor and a first-order factor capturing some specific variance due to processing emotional facial expressions. We further tested equivalence of the relationships between speed factors and polymorphisms of dopamine and serotonin transporter genes. Results show that the speed factors are not only psychometrically equivalent but invariant in their relation with the Catechol-O-Methyl-Transferase (COMT) Val158Met polymorphism. However, the 5-HTTLPR/rs25531 serotonin polymorphism was related with the first-order factor of emotion perception speed, suggesting a specific genetic correlate of processing emotions. We further investigated the relationship between several components of event-related brain potentials with psychometric abilities, and tested emotion specific individual differences at the neurophysiological level. Results revealed swifter emotion perception abilities to go along with larger amplitudes of the P100 and the Early Posterior Negativity (EPN), when emotion processing was modeled on its own. However, after partialling out the shared variance of emotion perception speed with general processing speed-related abilities, brain-behavior relationships did not remain specific for emotion. Together, the present results suggest that speed abilities are strongly interrelated but show some specificity for emotion processing speed at the psychometric level. At both genetic and neurophysiological levels, emotion specificity depended on whether general cognition is taken into account or not. These findings keenly suggest that general speed abilities should be taken into account when the study of emotion recognition abilities is targeted in its specificity.
面部身份识别和面部表情处理是至关重要的社会情感能力，但在简单任务中考虑处理速度时，它们似乎仅表现出有限的心理测量独特性。我们应用了一种全面的处理速度测量方法，并从个体差异的角度对比了社会情感、社会和非社会刺激中的表现特异性。一个多变量任务组中的表现可以通过一个一般速度因素和一个捕捉因处理情绪化面部表情而产生的一些特定变异的一阶因素来最好地建模。我们进一步测试了速度因素与多巴胺和5-羟色胺转运体基因多态性之间关系的等效性。结果表明，速度因素不仅在心理测量上是等效的,而且在与儿茶酚-O-甲基转移酶(COMT) Val158Met多态性的关系上是不变的。然而，5-HTTLPR/rs25531 5-羟色胺多态性与情绪感知速度的一阶因素相关，这表明处理情绪存在特定的基因相关性。我们进一步研究了事件相关脑电位的几个成分与心理测量能力之间的关系，并在神经生理水平上测试了情绪特异性个体差异。结果显示，当单独对情绪处理进行建模时，更快的情绪感知能力与更大的P100和早期后负波(EPN)振幅相关。然而，在排除情绪感知速度与一般处理速度相关能力的共同方差后，脑-行为关系对情绪不再具有特异性。总体而言,目前的结果表明，速度能力之间存在强烈的相互关联，但在心理测量水平上对情绪处理速度表现出一定的特异性。在基因和神经生理水平上，情绪特异性取决于是否考虑一般认知。这些发现强烈表明，在针对情绪识别能力的特异性进行研究时，应考虑一般速度能力。
