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Conscious and Non-conscious Representations of Emotional Faces in Asperger's Syndrome
08:31

Conscious and Non-conscious Representations of Emotional Faces in Asperger's Syndrome

Published on: July 31, 2016

A facial expression for anxiety.

Adam M Perkins1, Sophie L Inchley-Mort, Alan D Pickering

  • 1Department of Neuroimaging, King’s College London, UK. adam.perkins@kcl.ac.uk

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
|January 11, 2012
PubMed
Summary
This summary is machine-generated.

Anxiety and fear are distinct human emotions. This study shows anxiety has a unique facial expression linked to risk assessment in ambiguous threat situations, unlike the fear response.

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Area of Science:

  • Psychology
  • Neuroscience
  • Behavioral Science

Background:

  • Anxiety and fear are often confused, but rodent studies suggest they are distinct defensive responses.
  • Rodent models indicate anxiety is linked to risk assessment behavior in ambiguous threat scenarios.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate the human validity of the risk assessment explanation for anxiety.
  • To determine if anxiety elicits a distinct facial expression in humans.

Main Methods:

  • Volunteers posed facial expressions in response to emotive scenarios (ambiguous vs. unambiguous threats).
  • Participants matched facial expressions to scenarios and labeled them.
  • A second group matched emotion labels back to the facial expressions.

Main Results:

  • Facial expressions for ambiguous threats were consistently labeled as 'anxiety' and involved environmental scanning (eye darts, head swivels).
  • Facial expressions for unambiguous threats were labeled as 'fear'.
  • Labeling and back-matching confirmed a distinct facial expression for anxiety.

Conclusions:

  • Anxiety is associated with a unique facial expression, distinct from fear.
  • This anxiety expression appears to be an adaptive response to ambiguously threatening situations.
  • Findings support a functional, risk-assessing model of human anxiety.