Bacher Janine, von Planta Beryll, Bernhard Anka, Fairchild Graeme, Jansen Lucres, De Brito Stephane A, Freitag Christine M, Konrad Kerstin, Stadler Christina, Kohls Gregor, Unternaehrer Eva
Child and Adolescent Psychiatric Research Department, University Psychiatric Clinics Basel, Basel, Switzerland.
Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Medical Faculty, German Center for Child and Adolescent Health (DZKJ), TUD Dresden University of Technology, partner site Leipzig/Dresden, Dresden, Germany.
Eur Child Adolesc Psychiatry. 2025 Aug 27. doi: 10.1007/s00787-025-02846-y.
Facial emotion recognition (FER) biases refer to systematic tendencies to recognize specific emotions when processing facial expressions. In youths with conduct disorder (CD), who are characterized by highly impairing antisocial behavior, research on FER biases has focused on hostile attribution biases. This work has shown that youths with CD perceive ambiguous social cues as angry. However, youths with CD may not only show biases towards anger, which is why we investigated FER biases in youths with CD towards the six basic emotions. Within the European FemNAT-CD study, we analyzed data from 610 youths with CD (60% female) and 818 typically developing controls (TDCs; 68% female), aged 9 to 18 years (M = 14.1, SD = 2.41 years). FER biases were assessed using the Emotion Hexagon Task by showing morphed emotional expressions and asking participants to choose the predominant emotion. Biases were calculated as tendency towards an emotion shown at 0%, 10%, 30%, or 50% intensity. Our findings from hierarchical linear modelling indicate that youths with CD exhibited stronger FER biases than TDCs across all emotions, meaning that they misclassified each emotion more often. However, this difference varied by intensity, with youths with CD displaying weaker biases at higher intensity levels and a smaller increase in bias with increasing intensity level. Our findings indicate that youths with CD not only show a hostile attribution bias but rather misclassify emotions as predominant when they are present at low intensity, regardless of type of emotion.
面部情绪识别（FER）偏差是指在处理面部表情时识别特定情绪的系统倾向。在以严重反社会行为为特征的品行障碍（CD）青少年中，关于FER偏差的研究主要集中在敌意归因偏差上。这项研究表明，患有CD的青少年将模糊的社会线索视为愤怒。然而，患有CD的青少年可能不仅表现出对愤怒的偏差，这就是为什么我们调查了患有CD的青少年对六种基本情绪的FER偏差。在欧洲FemNAT-CD研究中，我们分析了610名患有CD的青少年（60%为女性）和818名发育正常的对照组（TDCs；68%为女性）的数据，年龄在9至18岁之间（M = 14.1，SD = 2.41岁）。使用情绪六边形任务评估FER偏差，通过展示变形的情绪表情并要求参与者选择主要情绪。偏差计算为在0%、10%、30%或50%强度下显示的情绪倾向。我们从分层线性模型得出的结果表明，患有CD的青少年在所有情绪上表现出比TDCs更强的FER偏差，这意味着他们更频繁地错误分类每种情绪。然而，这种差异因强度而异，患有CD的青少年在较高强度水平下表现出较弱的偏差，并且随着强度水平的增加偏差增加较小。我们的研究结果表明，患有CD的青少年不仅表现出敌意归因偏差，而且在低强度出现时，无论情绪类型如何，都会将情绪错误分类为主要情绪。
