Facial Emotion Recognition in Anorexia Nervosa

Istituto Auxologico Italiano40 enrolled

Overview

Altered emotional processing is reported in Anorexia Nervosa. However, this capability is generally measured through explicit measures, like self-report questionnaires and facial emotion recognition tasks. Instead, no previous research has investigated implicit emotional processing in this clinical condition. In the implicit facial emotion recognition task grounded on the implicit "redundant target effect", individuals generally respond faster when two identical targets are presented simultaneously rather than when presented alone; moreover, the competitive presence of a distractor (that is another emotion or a neutral expression) affects the correct recognition of the target. The ability to recognize and detect facial expressions is explored about two main emotions, fear and anger, because of their role in the intra- and interindividual psychological processing.

Study Type

OBSERVATIONAL

Enrollment

Conditions

Anorexia Nervosa

Interventions

Facial Emotion Recognition TestOTHER

In this test, the ability to detect and recognize facial expressions of fear or anger will be investigated.

Eligibility

Sex: FEMALEMin age: 20 YearsMax age: 50 YearsHealthy volunteers:

Medical Language ↔ Plain English

Inclusion Criteria: * right-handed * diagnosis of Anorexia Nervosa according to the APA criteria Exclusion criteria: \- concurrent neurological, neurodevelopmental (e.g., autism), motor, somatosensory and/or psychiatric disorders.

Outcomes

Primary Outcomes

Behavioural measure relative to recognition ability

Level of accuracy expressed in percentage (min =%; max = 100%) about only the valid trails, in the case of emotion used as target.

Time frame: baseline

Secondary Outcomes

Behavioural measure relative to the detection ability

Reaction time (i.e., time of response from the onset of the visual stimulus) expressed in milliseconds relative to the valid response for the targeted emotion