Department of Clinical Psychology, Behavioural Science Institute, Radboud University.
Centre for Emotional Health, Department of Psychology, Macquarie University.
J Clin Child Adolesc Psychol. 2022 Nov-Dec;51(6):955-969. doi: 10.1080/15374416.2022.2070850. Epub 2022 May 26.
The current study examined whether children with a social anxiety disorder (SAD) demonstrate divergent facial emotion processing and a disorder-specific negative interpretation bias in the processing of facial emotional expressions. This study aimed to overcome previous study limitations by including both a nonsocially anxious control group and a healthy control group to examine whether childhood SAD is characterized by a general emotion labeling deficit, and/or by a negative interpretation bias, indicated by systematic misclassifications, or a lower threshold for recognizing threatening emotions.
Participants were 132 children aged 7-12 years (= 9.15; 45.5% female). Children with SAD ( = 42) were compared to children with other, nonsocial, anxiety disorders ( = 40) and healthy control children ( = 50) on a novel facial emotion recognition task. Children judged ambiguous happy/neutral, angry/neutral and fear/neutral faces that were morphed at different intensities (10%, 30%, 50%, 70%).
Children with SAD did not differ from other groups in their accuracy of identifying emotions. They did not show systematic misclassifications or a heightened sensitivity to negative, threatening faces either. Rather, children with nonsocial anxiety disorders showed a generally heightened sensitivity to emotional faces.
The current study does not provide evidence for a general deficit in labeling of emotional faces in childhood SAD. Childhood SAD was not characterized by an interpretation bias in processing emotional faces. Children with nonsocial anxiety disorders may benefit from assistance in accurately interpreting the degree of emotionality in interpersonal situations.
本研究旨在考察社交焦虑障碍（SAD）儿童在处理面部情绪表达时是否表现出不同的面部情绪加工和特定于障碍的负性解释偏差。本研究通过纳入非社交焦虑对照组和健康对照组来克服以往研究的局限性，旨在考察儿童 SAD 是否表现出一般的情绪标签缺陷，以及/或者是否表现出负性解释偏差，表现为系统的错误分类，或识别威胁情绪的阈值较低。
参与者为 132 名 7-12 岁的儿童（年龄均数=9.15，45.5%为女性）。SAD 儿童（n=42）与其他非社交焦虑障碍儿童（n=40）和健康对照组儿童（n=50）在一项新的面部情绪识别任务上进行了比较。儿童判断模糊的快乐/中性、愤怒/中性和恐惧/中性面孔，这些面孔以不同的强度（10%、30%、50%、70%）进行变形。
SAD 儿童在识别情绪的准确性上与其他组没有差异。他们也没有表现出系统的错误分类或对负面、威胁性面孔的敏感性增加。相反，非社交焦虑障碍儿童对面部情绪表现出普遍较高的敏感性。
本研究没有提供证据表明儿童 SAD 在情绪面孔的标签识别上存在一般缺陷。儿童 SAD 在处理情绪面孔时没有表现出解释偏差。非社交焦虑障碍儿童可能需要帮助来准确地解读人际情境中的情绪程度。
