Department of Neuropsychology, University of Groningen, University Medical Centre Groningen, Groningen, The Netherlands.
School of Psychology, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia.
PLoS One. 2020 Oct 28;15(10):e0241297. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0241297. eCollection 2020.
Facial expressions have a communicatory function and the ability to read them is a prerequisite for understanding feelings and thoughts of other individuals. Impairments in recognition of facial emotional expressions are frequently found in patients with neurological conditions (e.g. stroke, traumatic brain injury, frontotemporal dementia). Hence, a standard neuropsychological assessment should include measurement of emotion recognition. However, there is debate regarding which tests are most suitable. The current study evaluates and compares three different emotion recognition tests. 84 healthy participants were included and assessed with three tests, in varying order: a. Ekman 60 Faces Test (FEEST) b. Emotion Recognition Task (ERT) c. Emotion Evaluation Test (EET). The tests differ in type of stimuli from static photographs (FEEST) to more dynamic stimuli in the form of morphed photographs (ERT) to videos (EET). Comparing performances on the three tests, the lowest total scores (67.3% correct answers) were found for the ERT. Significant, but moderate correlations were found between the total scores of the three tests, but nearly all correlations between the same emotions across different tests were not significant. Furthermore, we found cross-over effects of the FEEST and EET to the ERT; participants attained higher total scores on the ERT when another emotion recognition test had been administered beforehand. Moreover, the ERT proved to be sensitive to the effects of age and education. The present findings indicate that despite some overlap, each emotion recognition test measures a unique part of the construct. The ERT seemed to be the most difficult test: performances were lowest and influenced by differences in age and education and it was the only test that showed a learning effect after practice with other tests. This highlights the importance of appropriate norms.
面部表情具有交流功能，能够识别它们是理解他人情感和思想的前提。在神经疾病患者中（例如中风、创伤性脑损伤、额颞叶痴呆），经常发现对面部情感表达的识别受损。因此，标准的神经心理学评估应包括情绪识别的测量。然而，关于哪种测试最合适存在争议。本研究评估和比较了三种不同的情绪识别测试。纳入 84 名健康参与者，并以不同的顺序使用三种测试进行评估：a. 埃克曼 60 张面孔测试（FEEST）b. 情绪识别任务（ERT）c. 情绪评估测试（EET）。这些测试在刺激类型上有所不同，从静态照片（FEEST）到更动态的照片变形刺激（ERT）到视频（EET）。比较三种测试的表现，ERT 的总得分最低（67.3%正确答案）。三种测试的总分之间存在显著但中等程度的相关性，但不同测试中相同情绪之间的几乎所有相关性都不显著。此外，我们发现 FEEST 和 EET 对 ERT 有交叉影响；当先进行另一种情绪识别测试时，参与者在 ERT 上获得了更高的总分。此外，ERT 被证明对年龄和教育的影响敏感。本研究结果表明，尽管存在一些重叠，但每种情绪识别测试都测量了该结构的独特部分。ERT 似乎是最困难的测试：表现最低，受年龄和教育差异的影响，并且是唯一在练习其他测试后显示出学习效果的测试。这强调了适当的规范的重要性。
