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Updated: Aug 14, 2026

Conscious and Non-conscious Representations of Emotional Faces in Asperger's Syndrome
Published on: July 31, 2016
Facial emotion recognition in trait anxiety
Paola Surcinelli1, Maurizio Codispoti, Ornella Montebarocci
1Department of Psychology, University of Bologna, v.le Berti Pichat 5, 40127 Bologna, Italy.
Abstract:
The study investigated the relationship between recognition of emotional facial expressions and trait anxiety. A nonclinical sample of 19 participants with high-trait anxiety was selected, using the trait version of the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory, and compared with a sample of 20 participants with low-trait anxiety on a facial expression recognition task. Visual stimuli were 42 faces, representing seven emotional expressions: anger, sadness, happiness, fear, surprise, disgust and neutral. Participants had to identify the emotion portrayed by each face. Results showed that participants with high-trait anxiety recognized fear faces significantly better while the two groups did not differ in recognition of other facial expressions.
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