Maternal aggressive behavior in interactions with adolescent offspring: Proximal social-cognitive predictors in depressed and nondepressed mothers

Maternal depressive symptoms are associated with elevations in harsh parenting behavior, including criticism, negative affect, and hostile or coercive behavior, and these behaviors contribute to associations between maternal depressive symptomatology and child functioning. We used multilevel survival analysis to examine social-cognitive processes as proximal predictors of the onset and offset of maternal aggressive behavior during interactions with their adolescent children. Low-income women (N = 180) were selected for either: (a) elevated depressive symptoms and a history of treatment for depression (depressed group) or (b) not more than mild levels of current depressive symptomatology, no history of depression treatment, and no current mental health treatment (nondepressed group). These women and their adolescent children (ages 11-14, M = 12.93; 96 male sex, as assigned at birth) participated in a dyadic problem-solving interaction and mothers completed a video-mediated recall procedure, in which they watched a segment of the interaction, labeled their adolescents' affect, and made attributions for their behavior. Mothers in the depressed group were more likely to initiate aggressive behavior and, once initiated, were less likely to transition out of it. Mothers in both groups were less likely to transition out of aggressive behavior when they made negative attributions for their adolescents' behavior. Findings point to promising cognitive and behavioral targets for intervention. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Affect Recognition, Theory of Mind, and Empathy in Preschool Children with Externalizing Behavior Problems-A Group Comparison and Developmental Psychological Consideration

Preschool mental disorders are often associated with significant interpersonal problems, related to impaired affect recognition, theory of mind (ToM), and empathy. To date, these skills have not been studied together in preschoolers with externalizing behavior problems (EBPs). The aim of the present study was to investigate whether and to what extent preschool children with EBPs show impairments in affect recognition, ToM, and empathy. Preschoolers with EBPs, defined by current psychiatric treatment and T-scores ≥ 60 on the externalizing problem scale of the Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL/1½-5 or 6-18R) were compared to non-clinical controls (HCs), defined by no past and no current psychiatric treatment and T-scores < 60 on all CBCL broad-band scales. Groups were compared on affect recognition (NEuroPSYchological Assessment-II), affective ToM (Test of Emotion Comprehension), cognitive ToM (Extended Theory-of-Mind Scale), parent-reported emotional contagion, attention to others' feelings, and prosocial action (Empathy Questionnaire), IQ and language (Wechsler Preschool and Primary Scale of Intelligence-III Matrices, Active and Passive Vocabulary test), controlling for age, sex, and language abilities. Compared to 28 HCs, 22 preschoolers with EBPs (total sample meanage = 5.5 years +/- 0.8 years, range= 4.2-6.9 years, males 66%) had significantly greater impairments in cognitive ToM (p = 0.0012, η2 = 0.266), attention to others' feelings (p = 0.0049, η2 = 0.222), and prosocial action (p = 0.0070, η2 = 0.210), each representing strong effect sizes. EBPs were significantly related to cognitive domains, like prosocial action (r = -0.501), cognitive ToM (r = -0.425), and attention to others' feelings (r = -0.332), but not to affective domains of social cognition. Social cognitive development may be impaired as early as preschool age and should be promoted before the child starts school.

Facial affect recognition in context in adults with and without TBI

Introduction

Several studies have reported impaired emotion recognition in adults with traumatic brain injury (TBI), but studies have two major design features that limit application of results to real-world contexts: (1) participants choose from among lists of basic emotions, rather than generating emotion labels, and (2) images are typically presented in isolation rather than in context. To address these limitations, we created an open-labeling task with faces shown alone or in real-life scenes, to more closely approximate how adults with TBI label facial emotions beyond the lab.

Methods

Participants were 55 adults (29 female) with moderate to severe TBI and 55 uninjured comparison peers, individually matched for race, sex, and age. Participants viewed 60 photographs of faces, either alone or in the pictured person's real-life context, and were asked what that person was feeling. We calculated the percent of responses that were standard forced-choice-task options, and also used sentiment intensity analysis to compare verbal responses between the two groups. We tracked eye movements for a subset of participants, to explore whether gaze duration or number of fixations helped explain any group differences in labels.

Results

Over 50% of responses in both groups were words other than basic emotions on standard affect tasks, highlighting the importance of eliciting open-ended responses. Valence of labels by participants with TBI was attenuated relative to valence of Comparison group labels, i.e., TBI group responses were less positive to positive images and the same was true for negative images, although the TBI group responses had higher lexical diversity. There were no significant differences in gaze duration or number of fixations between groups.

Discussion

Results revealed qualitative differences in affect labels between adults with and without TBI that would not have emerged on standard forced-choice tasks. Verbal differences did not appear to be attributable to differences in gaze patterns, leaving open the question of mechanisms of atypical affect processing in adults with TBI.

Relationships between Affect Recognition, Empathy, Alexithymia, and Co-Occurring Conditions in Autism

Prior studies show differences in empathy and affect-recognition ability between those with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and typically developing (TD) individuals. Autistic individuals also exhibit increased behavioral, gastrointestinal, and sleep issues. In the current study, we explored the differences in empathy and affect recognition between the ASD and TD groups; and we investigated their associations with conditions co-occurring in ASD. A total of 54 TD and 56 ASD children (8-17 years) were included. As compared to the TD group, the ASD group showed lower scores for affect recognition and perspective taking (PT) and higher scores for personal distress (PD). Interestingly, results from hierarchical linear regressions suggested that disparities in the PD and PT between the groups were primarily attributable to attenuated levels of alexithymia, rather than being mediated by the presence of an autism diagnosis. Differences in affect-recognition ability, however, were mediated by both an autism diagnosis and alexithymia. We also found significant correlations between empathy and affect recognition and measures of related conditions common in ASD. Alexithymia, hence, contributes to difficulties in empathy while both alexithymia and autism are associated with affect-recognition ability in ASD. Additionally, the association between affect recognition and empathic ability with co-occurring conditions in ASD needs to be considered during assessments and interventions.

Prediction of Continuous Emotional Measures through Physiological and Visual Data

The affective state of a person can be measured using arousal and valence values. In this article, we contribute to the prediction of arousal and valence values from various data sources. Our goal is to later use such predictive models to adaptively adjust virtual reality (VR) environments and help facilitate cognitive remediation exercises for users with mental health disorders, such as schizophrenia, while avoiding discouragement. Building on our previous work on physiological, electrodermal activity (EDA) and electrocardiogram (ECG) recordings, we propose improving preprocessing and adding novel feature selection and decision fusion processes. We use video recordings as an additional data source for predicting affective states. We implement an innovative solution based on a combination of machine learning models alongside a series of preprocessing steps. We test our approach on RECOLA, a publicly available dataset. The best results are obtained with a concordance correlation coefficient (CCC) of 0.996 for arousal and 0.998 for valence using physiological data. Related work in the literature reported lower CCCs on the same data modality; thus, our approach outperforms the state-of-the-art approaches for RECOLA. Our study underscores the potential of using advanced machine learning techniques with diverse data sources to enhance the personalization of VR environments.

Social skills and psychopathology are associated with autonomic function in children: a cross-sectional observational study

In recent years, the increase of psychopathological disorders in the population has become a health emergency, leading to a great effort to understand psychological vulnerability mechanisms. In this scenario, the role of the autonomic nervous system (ANS) has become increasingly important. This study investigated the association between ANS, social skills, and psychopathological functioning in children. As an ANS status proxy, we measured heart rate variability (HRV). Infants admitted to the neonatal intensive care unit of the University Hospital of Padova because of preterm birth or neonatal hypoxic-ischemic encephalopathy were sequentially recruited from January 2011 to June 2013 and followed long-term up to school age in this cross-sectional observational study. We recorded 5 minutes of HRV immediately before measuring performance in social abilities tasks (affect recognition and theory of mind, NEPSY-II) in 50 children (mean age 7.4 ± 1.4 years) with and without risk factors for developing neuropsychiatric disorders due to pre-/perinatal insults without major sequelae. Children also completed extensive cognitive, neuropsychological, and psychosocial assessment. Parents were assessed with psychopathological interviews and a questionnaire (CBCL 6-18). Analysis in a robust Bayesian framework was used to unearth dependencies between HRV, social skills, and psychopathological functioning. Social task scores were associated with HRV components, with high frequency the most consistent. HRV bands were also associated with the psychopathological questionnaire. Only normalized HRV high frequency was able to distinguish impaired children in the affect recognition task. Our data suggest that ANS may be implicated in social cognition both in typical and atypical developmental conditions and that HRV has cross-disease sensitivity. We suggest that HRV parameters may reflect a neurobiological vulnerability to psychopathology. The study was approved by the Ethics Committee of the University Hospital of Padova (Comitato Etico per la Sperimentazione, Azienda Opedaliera di Padova, approval No. 1693P).

High Schizotypy Predicts Emotion Recognition Independently of Negative Affect

Introduction: Deficits in Emotion Recognition (ER) contribute significantly to poorer functional outcomes in people with schizophrenia. However, rather than reflecting a core symptom of schizophrenia, reduced ER has been suggested to reflect increased mood disorder co-morbidity and confounds of patient status such as medication. We investigated whether ER deficits are replicable in psychometrically defined schizotypy, and whether this putative association is mediated by increased negative affect. Methods: Two hundred and nine participants between the ages of 18 and 69 (66% female) were recruited from online platforms: 80% held an undergraduate qualification or higher, 44% were current students, and 46% were in current employment. Participants were assessed on psychometric schizotypy using the O-LIFE which maps onto the same symptoms structure (positive, negative, and disorganised) as schizophrenia. Negative affect was assessed using the Depression Anxiety and Stress Scale (DASS-21). Emotion Recognition of both positive and negative emotions was assessed using the short version of the Geneva Emotion Recognition Task (GERT-S). Results: Negative schizotypy traits predicted poorer ER accuracy to negative emotions (β = -0.192, p = 0.002) as predicted. Unexpectedly, disorganised schizotypy traits predicted improved performance to negative emotions (β = 0.256, p = 0.007) (primarily disgust). Negative affect was found to be unrelated to ER performance of either valence (both p > 0.591). No measure predicted ER accuracy of positive emotions. Positive schizotypy traits were not found to predict either positive or negative ER accuracy. However, positive schizotypy predicted increased confidence in decisions and disorganised schizotypy predicted reduced confidence in decisions. Discussion: The replication of ER deficits in non-clinical negative schizotypy suggests that the association between negative symptoms and ER deficits in clinical samples may be independent of confounds of patient status (i.e., anti-psychotic medication). The finding that this association was independent of negative affect further suggests ER deficits in patients may also be independent of mood disorder co-morbidity. This association was not demonstrated for the positive symptom dimension of the O-LIFE, which may be due to low levels of this trait in the current sample.

Can We Ditch Feature Engineering? End-to-End Deep Learning for Affect Recognition from Physiological Sensor Data

To further extend the applicability of wearable sensors in various domains such as mobile health systems and the automotive industry, new methods for accurately extracting subtle physiological information from these wearable sensors are required. However, the extraction of valuable information from physiological signals is still challenging—smartphones can count steps and compute heart rate, but they cannot recognize emotions and related affective states. This study analyzes the possibility of using end-to-end multimodal deep learning (DL) methods for affect recognition. Ten end-to-end DL architectures are compared on four different datasets with diverse raw physiological signals used for affect recognition, including emotional and stress states. The DL architectures specialized for time-series classification were enhanced to simultaneously facilitate learning from multiple sensors, each having their own sampling frequency. To enable fair comparison among the different DL architectures, Bayesian optimization was used for hyperparameter tuning. The experimental results showed that the performance of the models depends on the intensity of the physiological response induced by the affective stimuli, i.e., the DL models recognize stress induced by the Trier Social Stress Test more successfully than they recognize emotional changes induced by watching affective content, e.g., funny videos. Additionally, the results showed that the CNN-based architectures might be more suitable than LSTM-based architectures for affect recognition from physiological sensors.

Implicit and explicit processing of bodily emotions in schizophrenia

INTRODUCTION

Disturbed emotion processing is well documented in schizophrenia, but the majority of studies evaluate processing of emotion only from facial expressions. Social cues are also communicated via body posture, and they are similarly relevant for successful social interactions. The aim of the current study was to thoroughly examine body perception abilities in individuals with schizophrenia.

METHODS

Fifty-nine patients with schizophrenia and 37 healthy controls completed two tasks of body processing. The first, which was based on the Affect Misattribution Procedure, evaluated implicit processing of bodily emotions, and the second utilised a traditional emotion identification paradigm to assess explicit emotion recognition.

RESULTS

Results revealed aberrant implicit processing, but more normative explicit processing, in individuals with schizophrenia. Moderate associations were found between processing of bodies and symptoms of paranoia. Performance on the tasks was not related to cognitive functioning but was associated with clinician-rated social functioning.

CONCLUSIONS

Collectively, these results provide information about disturbed processing of bodily emotions in schizophrenia and suggest that these disturbances are associated with the severity of positive symptoms and predict difficulties in everyday social activities and interpersonal relationships.

Wearable-Based Affect Recognition-A Review

Affect recognition is an interdisciplinary research field bringing together researchers from natural and social sciences. Affect recognition research aims to detect the affective state of a person based on observables, with the goal to, for example, provide reasoning for the person's decision making or to support mental wellbeing (e.g., stress monitoring). Recently, beside of approaches based on audio, visual or text information, solutions relying on wearable sensors as observables, recording mainly physiological and inertial parameters, have received increasing attention. Wearable systems enable an ideal platform for long-term affect recognition applications due to their rich functionality and form factor, while providing valuable insights during everyday life through integrated sensors. However, existing literature surveys lack a comprehensive overview of state-of-the-art research in wearable-based affect recognition. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to provide a broad overview and in-depth understanding of the theoretical background, methods and best practices of wearable affect and stress recognition. Following a summary of different psychological models, we detail the influence of affective states on the human physiology and the sensors commonly employed to measure physiological changes. Then, we outline lab protocols eliciting affective states and provide guidelines for ground truth generation in field studies. We also describe the standard data processing chain and review common approaches related to the preprocessing, feature extraction and classification steps. By providing a comprehensive summary of the state-of-the-art and guidelines to various aspects, we would like to enable other researchers in the field to conduct and evaluate user studies and develop wearable systems.

Facial emotion recognition of older adults with traumatic brain injury

OBJECTIVES

The objective of this study was to examine the effects of traumatic brain injury (TBI) and age on facial emotion recognition abilities in adults. Age and TBI were expected to have negative effects on emotion recognition and a TBI by age interaction was hypothesized such that older adults with TBI would have the lowest emotion recognition scores.

METHODS

A prospective cohort study was conducted. Participants were 26 adults with moderate-severe TBI (13 older and 13 younger) and 26 uninjured peers matched for age, sex, and education. Emotion recognition was measured using the Emotion Recognition Task, which is comprised of dynamically morphed facial expressions of the six basic emotions, presented at different intensity levels.

RESULTS

TBI and older age were associated with poorer recognition of both subtle and intense expressions, but only for expressions of anger and sadness. There was no interaction of age and TBI.

CONCLUSIONS

Results add to the growing evidence of emotion recognition impairments after TBI, particularly for select negative emotions, and extend this finding to adults over the age of 60. Further research is needed to better understand social cognitive effects of TBI across the adult lifespan.

Sensing the Worst: Neurophenomenological Perspectives on Neutral Stimuli Misperception in Schizophrenia Spectrum

While investigating social cognitive impairments in schizophrenia, prominent evidence has been found that patients with schizophrenia show a tendency to misclassify neutral stimuli as negatively valenced. Within this population, patients presenting delusions are more prone to this phenomenon. In a previous study, Schizophrenia spectrum (SzSp) patients rated positive, negative and neutral stimuli that were multimodally presented, while assessed with a checklist exploring anomalous subjective experiences and evaluated for positive and negative symptomatology. In the present work, we aimed to further explore the relationship between neutral stimuli misperception, anomalous experiences and positive/negative symptoms in SzSp patients. To this end, we adopted a dimensional approach by reconstructing from available data: (1) four a priori scales representing essential dimensions of SzSp experiential pathology following Parnas et al. (2005); and (2) five clinically meaningful factors to describe illness severity derived by Toomey et al. (1997). Results showed that although overall patients correctly recognized the target emotions, those who misinterpreted neutral auditory cues as negatively valenced also presented higher scores in Perplexity (PY), Bizarre Delusions (BD) and Disorganization (Di) dimensions. Moreover, a positive association between BD and both PY and Self-Disorder (SD) dimensions emerged, suggesting that psychotic symptoms may be directly linked to patients' subjectivity. In an attempt to comprehensively capture the multilayered neutral stimuli misperception phenomenon in SzSp, we aimed at bridging phenomenology and neurobiology by connecting the levels of molecular neurochemistry (i.e., altered dopaminergic neurotransmission), system neuroscience (aberrant salience of perceptual details) and psychopathology (the chain involving hyper-reflexivity, self-disorders and the emergence of delusions).

Emotion processing deficits in the different dimensions of psychometric schizotypy

Schizotypy refers to a personality structure indicating "proneness" to schizophrenia. Around 10% of the general population has increased schizotypal traits, they also share other core features with schizophrenia and are thus at heightened risk for developing schizophrenia and spectrum disorders. A key aspect in schizophrenia-spectrum pathology is the impairment observed in emotion-related processes. This review summarizes findings on impairments related to central aspects of emotional processes, such as emotional disposition, alexithymia, facial affect recognition and speech prosody, in high schizotypal individuals in the general population. Although the studies in the field are not numerous, the current findings indicate that all these aspects of emotional processing are deficient in psychometric schizotypy, in accordance to the schizophrenia-spectrum literature. A disturbed frontotemporal neural network seems to be the critical link between these impairments, schizotypy and schizophrenia. The limitations of the current studies and suggestions for future research are discussed.

All for One: Contributions of Age, Socioeconomic Factors, Executive Functioning, and Social Cognition to Moral Reasoning in Childhood

Moral reasoning (MR) is a socio-cognitive skill essential to appropriate social functioning in childhood, and evolves in quality and complexity during ontogenetic development. Past research suggests that MR is related to age, socioeconomic factors, as well as some social and cognitive skills, such as executive functioning (EF), theory of mind (ToM), empathy, and affect recognition. However, their contributions have been studied in silos rather than comprehensively, with little integration of the relative and combined contribution of these skills to MR. Furthermore, few studies have addressed the putative links between these factors in childhood, a period during which these skills are in maturation. The aim of this study was to explore what factors predict moral maturity in typically developing children (n = 76, 47.4% males, M = 9.2, SD = 1.67 years), explore the potential moderating and mediating role of executive functions and social cognition in the relationship between age and MR maturity, and identify the specific contributions of age, socioeconomic factors, EF, and social cognition, using an innovative visual MR assessment tool (So-Moral). The results indicate that MR maturity was correlated with age, EF (inhibition, verbal fluency, and attentional control), and social cognition (ToM and affect recognition). Neither EF nor social cognition moderated the effect of age on MR maturity. However, verbal fluency and third-order false beliefs had a moderating role in this link. MR maturity in children was predicted by three variables from each of the three domains: age, verbal fluency, and third-order ToM. These results contribute to a better understanding of the underpinnings of MR during childhood, suggesting that MR is not reducible to general developmental factors such as age, but that higher order skills, such EF and social cognition also contribute to moral maturity. The findings have relevance for both typically developing and clinical populations in which social skills may be reduced, as well as for the identification of potential loci for intervention in children at-risk for socially maladaptive behaviors.

Training of Affect Recognition impacts electrophysiological correlates of facial affect recognition in schizophrenia: Analyses of fixation-locked potentials

OBJECTIVES

Training of Affect Recognition (TAR) is a useful approach to restoring cognitive function in schizophrenic patients. Along with improving visual exploration of faces and altering central information processing in relevant brain areas, TAR attenuates impairments in facial affect recognition. In the present study, we investigate the effects of TAR on early electrophysiological correlates of facial affect recognition in schizophrenia.

METHODS

The study population comprised 12 schizophrenic patients and 14 healthy controls. In each individual, we carried out EEG, concomitant measurements of scanning eye movements and fixation-based low resolution electromagnetic tomography (sLORETA) analyses of brain electric activity. All analyses were performed at baseline and after participation in TAR.

RESULTS

In patients, brain activation patterns significantly changed after completing the TAR. Functional improvements were particularly pronounced in the superior parietal and inferior parietal lobes, where trained patients showed a larger increase in activation than untrained healthy controls.

CONCLUSIONS

The TAR activates compensatory brain processes involved in the perception, attention and evaluation of emotional stimuli. This may underlie the established behavioral effects of the TAR in schizophrenic patients, which include improvements in facial affect recognition and alterations of visual exploration strategies.

Deficits in Metacognitive Capacity Are Related to Subjective Distress and Heightened Levels of Hyperarousal Symptoms in Adults With Posttraumatic Stress Disorder

Among persons with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), the severity of symptoms and concurrent distress are not fully explained by trauma severity. Interest has consequently arisen in the psychological processes that cause distress and heighten PTSD symptoms. This study accordingly sought to examine whether differences in metacognitive capacity are related to levels of emotional distress, avoidance/numbing, and hyperarousal. Participants were 48 adults with a confirmed diagnosis of PTSD. Comparison groups included 51 adults with HIV and 183 with schizophrenia. Metacognition, emotion recognition, depression, and emotional distress and levels of avoidance/numbing and hyperarousal were assessed concurrently using the Metacognition Assessment Scale-Abbreviated, the Bell Lysaker Emotion Recognition Test, the Beck Depression Inventory, and the Clinician-Administered PTSD Scale. Results revealed that the PTSD group had better ratings of overall metacognitive capacity than the schizophrenia group and specifically poorer levels of metacognitive mastery, or the ability to use metacognitive knowledge to respond to challenges, than the HIV group. Within the PTSD group, poorer metacognitive mastery was linked with greater distress and higher hyperarousal when depression was controlled for statistically. Emotion recognition was not linked with distress or symptom severity. Results are consistent with models in which symptom severity in PTSD is related to the extent to which persons can use knowledge of themselves and others to find ways to respond to distress that match their own unique needs.

An examination of auditory processing and affective prosody in relatives of patients with auditory hallucinations

Research on auditory verbal hallucinations (AVHs) indicates that AVH schizophrenia patients show greater abnormalities on tasks requiring recognition of affective prosody (AP) than non-AVH patients. Detecting AP requires accurate perception of manipulations in pitch, amplitude and duration. Schizophrenia patients with AVHs also experience difficulty detecting these acoustic manipulations; with a number of theorists speculating that difficulties in pitch, amplitude and duration discrimination underlie AP abnormalities. This study examined whether both AP and these aspects of auditory processing are also impaired in first degree relatives of persons with AVHs. It also examined whether pitch, amplitude and duration discrimination were related to AP, and to hallucination proneness. Unaffected relatives of AVH schizophrenia patients (N = 19) and matched healthy controls (N = 33) were compared using tone discrimination tasks, an AP task, and clinical measures. Relatives were slower at identifying emotions on the AP task (p = 0.002), with secondary analysis showing this was especially so for happy (p = 0.014) and neutral (p = 0.001) sentences. There was a significant interaction effect for pitch between tone deviation level and group (p = 0.019), and relatives performed worse than controls on amplitude discrimination and duration discrimination. AP performance for happy and neutral sentences was significantly correlated with amplitude perception. Lastly, AVH proneness in the entire sample was significantly correlated with pitch discrimination (r = 0.44) and pitch perception was shown to predict AVH proneness in the sample (p = 0.005). These results suggest basic impairments in auditory processing are present in relatives of AVH patients; they potentially underlie processing speed in AP tasks, and predict AVH proneness. This indicates auditory processing deficits may be a core feature of AVHs in schizophrenia, and are worthy of further study as a potential endophenotype for AVHs.

The influence of combined cognitive plus social-cognitive training on amygdala response during face emotion recognition in schizophrenia

Both cognitive and social-cognitive deficits impact functional outcome in schizophrenia. Cognitive remediation studies indicate that targeted cognitive and/or social-cognitive training improves behavioral performance on trained skills. However, the neural effects of training in schizophrenia and their relation to behavioral gains are largely unknown. This study tested whether a 50-h intervention which included both cognitive and social-cognitive training would influence neural mechanisms that support social ccognition. Schizophrenia participants completed a computer-based intervention of either auditory-based cognitive training (AT) plus social-cognition training (SCT) (N=11) or non-specific computer games (CG) (N=11). Assessments included a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) task of facial emotion recognition, and behavioral measures of cognition, social cognition, and functional outcome. The fMRI results showed the predicted group-by-time interaction. Results were strongest for emotion recognition of happy, surprise and fear: relative to CG participants, AT+SCT participants showed a neural activity increase in bilateral amygdala, right putamen and right medial prefrontal cortex. Across all participants, pre-to-post intervention neural activity increase in these regions predicted behavioral improvement on an independent emotion perception measure (MSCEIT: Perceiving Emotions). Among AT+SCT participants alone, neural activity increase in right amygdala predicted behavioral improvement in emotion perception. The findings indicate that combined cognition and social-cognition training improves neural systems that support social-cognition skills.

Socio-emotional processing and functioning of youth at high risk for bipolar disorder

BACKGROUND

The goal of this study was to investigate differences in socio-emotional processing and functioning in children and adolescents at high risk for bipolar disorder (BD) and healthy control participants.

METHODS

Children and adolescents with a parent with bipolar disorder, who had mood dysregulation but not fully syndromal BD (high risk, HR, n=24), were compared to participants with no personal or family history of psychopathology (healthy control, HC, n=27) across several neuropsychological domains. Social reciprocity was measured by the Social Responsiveness Scale, theory of mind was measured by use of the NEPSY, and affect recognition was measured by the NEPSY and the Diagnostic Test of Nonverbal Accuracy 2 (DANVA).

RESULTS

The HR group demonstrated significant impairment in social reciprocity, including impairments in social awareness, social cognition, social communication, social motivation, and autistic mannerisms. There were no significant group differences in performance on theory of mind or affect recognition tasks.

LIMITATIONS

Lack of impairment in tasks associated with theory of mind or affect recognition indicate that social functioning difficulties are not likely due to impairments in these areas, or that the measures employed were not sufficiently sensitive to detect group differences.

CONCLUSIONS

Youth at high risk for BD demonstrated impairments in numerous social domains, which may be due to innate differences in brain development governing socio-emotional functioning or may be due to disruptions in normal development caused by mood regulation difficulties.

Predicting the accuracy of facial affect recognition: the interaction of child maltreatment and intellectual functioning

Previous research demonstrates that both child maltreatment and intellectual performance contribute uniquely to the accurate identification of facial affect by children and adolescents. The purpose of this study was to extend this research by examining whether child maltreatment affects the accuracy of facial recognition differently at varying levels of intellectual functioning. A sample of maltreated (n=50) and nonmaltreated (n=56) adolescent females, 14 to 19 years of age, was recruited to participate in this study. Participants completed demographic and study-related questionnaires and interviews to control for potential psychological and psychiatric confounds such as symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder, negative affect, and difficulties in emotion regulation. Participants also completed an experimental paradigm that recorded responses to facial affect displays starting in a neutral expression and changing into a full expression of one of six emotions: happiness, sadness, anger, disgust, fear, or surprise. Hierarchical multiple regression assessed the incremental advantage of evaluating the interaction between child maltreatment and intellectual functioning. Results indicated that the interaction term accounted for a significant amount of additional variance in the accurate identification of facial affect after controlling for relevant covariates and main effects. Specifically, maltreated females with lower levels of intellectual functioning were least accurate in identifying facial affect displays, whereas those with higher levels of intellectual functioning performed as well as nonmaltreated females. These results suggest that maltreatment and intellectual functioning interact to predict the recognition of facial affect, with potential long-term consequences for the interpersonal functioning of maltreated females.

Affect recognition in people at clinical high risk of psychosis

Individuals with schizophrenia demonstrate stable deficits in affect recognition. Similar deficits in affect recognition have been observed in those who are at clinical high risk (CHR) of developing psychosis. The current project aimed to longitudinally examine affect processing in CHR individuals, to determine if affect processing predicted later conversion to psychosis and if affect processing deficits were unique to those who met established criteria for prodromal syndromes. The sample consisted of 172 CHR and 100 help-seeking individuals (HS) who were followed for up to 24 months. All CHR individuals met the Criteria of Prodromal Syndromes (COPS) based on the Structured Interview for Prodromal Symptoms (SIPS). The SIPS was used to determine conversion to psychosis. Affect recognition was assessed using two facial affect recognition tasks and a measure of affective prosody. In comparison to previously published data from non-psychiatric controls, both CHR and HS groups demonstrated deficits in affect recognition. By 2 years 25 CHR participants converted to psychosis. Interestingly, there were no differences between converters and non-converters on any affect recognition tasks. This is one of the first studies to longitudinally examine affect processing and its relationship to later conversion to psychosis in individuals at-risk for psychosis. While poorer affect recognition may be associated with vulnerability for psychosis, the current results suggest that it may not be a marker of developing a psychotic illness.

Is it possible to have impaired neurocognition but good social cognition in schizophrenia?

Social cognitive impairment in schizophrenia is common and associated with poor functional outcome. While correlations in the moderate range suggest that social cognition and neurocognition are separate but overlapping domains, less is known about whether intact neurocognition represents a "necessary but not sufficient" condition for intact social cognition, as has been suggested. In the present study we examined the following in a sample of 119 psychiatrically stable outpatients with schizophrenia: 1) correlations between multiple social cognitive measures and neurocognition, 2) the predictive value of neurocognitive domains in explaining social cognitive performance, and 3) the co-occurrence of social cognitive and neurocognitive impairment within participants. While ¼ of participants showed intact overall neurocognition and impaired overall social cognition, only one participant had normal-range social cognition and impaired neurocognition. Results support the notion that normal range neurocognition is a necessary though not necessarily sufficient building block for good social cognitive performance.

Affect recognition in adults with ADHD

OBJECTIVE

This study compared affect recognition abilities between adults with and without ADHD.

METHOD

The sample consisted of 51 participants (34 men, 17 women) divided into 3 groups: ADHD-combined type (ADHD-C; n = 17), ADHD-predominantly inattentive type (ADHD-I; n = 16), and controls (n = 18). The mean age was 34 years. Affect recognition abilities were assessed by the Diagnostic Analysis of Nonverbal Accuracy (DANVA).

RESULTS

ANOVA showed that the ADHD-I group made more fearful emotion errors relative to the control group. Inattentive symptoms were positively correlated, whereas hyperactive-impulsive symptoms were negatively correlated with affect recognition errors.

CONCLUSION

These results suggested that affect recognition abilities may be impaired in adults with ADHD and that affect recognition abilities are more adversely affected by inattentive than hyperactive-impulsive symptoms.

Functional significance of preserved affect recognition in schizophrenia

Affect recognition (AR) is a core component of social information processing; thus, it may be critical to understanding social behavior and functioning in broader aspects of daily living. Deficits in AR are well documented in schizophrenia, but there is also evidence that many individuals with schizophrenia perform AR tasks at near-normal levels. In the current study, we sought to evaluate the functional significance of AR deficits in schizophrenia by comparing subgroups with normal-range and impaired AR performance on proxy and interviewer-rated measures of real-world functioning. Schizophrenia outpatients were classified as normal-range (N=17) and impaired (N=31) based on a logistic cut point in the sample distribution of Bell-Lysaker Emotion Recognition Task (BLERT) scores, referenced to a normative sample of healthy control subjects (N=56). The derived schizophrenia subgroups were then compared on proxy [University of California San Diego Performance-Based Skill Assessment (UPSA), Social Skills Performance Assessment (SSPA), Medication Management Ability Assessment (MMAA)] and interviewer-rated [Quality of Life Scale (QLS), Independent Living Skills Survey (ILSS)] measures of functioning, as well as a battery of neurocognitive tests. Initial analyses indicated superior MMAA and QLS performance in the near-normal AR subgroup. Covariate analyses indicated that group differences in neurocognition fully mediated the observed associations between AR and MMAA, and attenuated the observed relationships between AR classification and QLS. These results support three main conclusions. First, AR, like many other domains of psychopathology studied in schizophrenia, is preserved in select subgroups. Second, there is a positive relationship between AR performance and functional outcome measures. Third, neurocognition appears to mediate the relationship between AR and measures of functioning.