Wells Erica L, Groves Nicole B, Day Taylor N, Harmon Sherelle L, Soto Elia F, Miller Caroline E, Kofler Michael J
Department of Psychology.
Emotion. 2021 Apr;21(3):665-677. doi: 10.1037/emo0000732. Epub 2020 Mar 19.
Inconsistent evidence suggests that pediatric attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) may be associated with impairments in the ability to use context clues to infer the emotion states of others. However, the evidence base for these impairments is comprised of data from laboratory-based tests of emotion inference that may be confounded by demands on nonaffective cognitive processes that have been linked with ADHD. The current study builds on our previous study of facial affect recognition to address this limitation and investigate a potential mechanism underlying children's ability to infer emotion state from context clues. To do so, we used a fully crossed, counterbalanced experimental design that systematically manipulated emotion inference and working memory demands in 77 carefully phenotyped children ages 8-13 ( = 10.46, = 1.54; 66% Caucasian/Non-Hispanic; 42% female) with ADHD ( = 42) and without ADHD ( = 35). Results of Bayesian mixed-model ANOVAs indicated that using context clues to infer the emotion state of others competed for neurocognitive resources with the processes involved in rehearsing/maintaining information within working memory (BF₁₀ = 1.57 × 10¹⁹, = 0.72). Importantly, there was significant evidence the critical Group × Condition interaction for response times (BF₀₁ = 4.93), and no significant evidence for this interaction for accuracy (BF₀₁ = 2.40). In other words, children with ADHD do not infer emotions more slowly than children without ADHD ( = 0.13), and their small magnitude impairment in accuracy ( = 0.30) was attributable to their generally less accurate performance on choice-response tasks (i.e., across both emotion and control conditions). Taken together, the evidence indicates that emotion inference abilities are likely unimpaired in pediatric ADHD and that working memory is implicated in the ability to infer emotion from context for all children-not just children with ADHD. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).
不一致的证据表明，小儿注意力缺陷/多动障碍（ADHD）可能与利用上下文线索推断他人情绪状态的能力受损有关。然而，这些损伤的证据基础是来自基于实验室的情绪推理测试的数据，这些数据可能会因对与ADHD相关的非情感认知过程的要求而混淆。本研究基于我们之前对面部表情识别的研究，以解决这一局限性，并研究儿童从上下文线索推断情绪状态能力背后的潜在机制。为此，我们采用了完全交叉、平衡的实验设计，系统地操纵了77名8至13岁（平均年龄 = 10.46，标准差 = 1.54；66%为白人/非西班牙裔；42%为女性）经过仔细表型分析的患有ADHD（n = 42）和未患ADHD（n = 35）儿童的情绪推理和工作记忆需求。贝叶斯混合模型方差分析结果表明，利用上下文线索推断他人情绪状态与在工作记忆中排练/维持信息所涉及的过程竞争神经认知资源（BF₁₀ = 1.57 × 10¹⁹， Cohen's d = 0.72）。重要的是，有显著证据支持反应时间的关键组×条件交互作用（BF₀₁ = 4.93），而对于准确性则没有显著证据支持这种交互作用（BF₀₁ = 2.40）。换句话说，患有ADHD的儿童推断情绪的速度并不比未患ADHD的儿童慢（Cohen's d = 0.13），他们在准确性方面的微小损伤（Cohen's d = 0.30）归因于他们在选择反应任务（即跨越情绪和控制条件）上总体表现较差。综上所述，证据表明小儿ADHD患者的情绪推理能力可能未受损，并且工作记忆与所有儿童（不仅仅是患有ADHD的儿童）从上下文推断情绪的能力有关。（PsycInfo数据库记录（c）2021美国心理学会，保留所有权利）
