Recognition of facial affect in girls with conduct disorder

Impaired recognition of facial affect has been reported in youths and adults with antisocial behavior. However, few of these studies have examined subjects with the psychiatric disorders associated with antisocial behavior, and there are virtually no data on females. Our goal was to determine if facial affect recognition was impaired in adolescent girls with conduct disorder (CD). Performance on the Ekman Pictures of Facial Affect (POFA) task was compared in 35 girls with CD (mean age of 17.9 years+/-0.95; 38.9% African-American) and 30 girls who had no lifetime history of psychiatric disorder (mean age of 17.6 years+/-0.77; 30% African-American). Forty-five slides representing the six emotions in the POFA were presented one at a time; stimulus duration was 5s. Multivariate analyses indicated that CD vs. control status was not significantly associated with the total number of correct answers nor the number of correct answers for any specific emotion. Effect sizes were all considered small. Within-CD analyses did not demonstrate a significant effect for aggressive antisocial behavior on facial affect recognition. Our findings suggest that girls with CD are not impaired in facial affect recognition. However, we did find that girls with a history of trauma/neglect made a greater number of errors in recognizing fearful faces. Explanations for these findings are discussed and implications for future research presented.