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Updated: Mar 30, 2026

Conscious and Non-conscious Representations of Emotional Faces in Asperger's Syndrome
Published on: July 31, 2016
Reading simple and complex facial expressions in patients with major depressive disorder and anxiety disorders
Sunkyung Yoon1, Hyang Sook Kim2, Jeong-In Kim1
1Clinical Emotion and Cognition Research Laboratory, Goyang, Korea.
Aim:
Decoding facial expression is important for psychological well-being. This study examined facial emotion recognition of simple/complex and pleasant/unpleasant emotions in patients with major depressive disorder (MDD) and anxiety disorders (AnD).
Methods:
Patients with MDD (n = 37), AnD (n = 36) and healthy controls (HC) (n = 40) participated in this study. The recognition accuracy of emotional faces was calculated.
Results:
Patients with MDD had significantly lower recognition accuracy compared to HC. Patients with MDD exhibited lower recognition accuracy for simple emotions compared to patients with AnD and HC, and lower accuracy for complex emotions compared only to HC. Patients with AnD and HC showed comparable recognition accuracy for simple emotions, which were lower than that of patients with MDD. However, in recognition accuracy of complex emotions, AnD was not significantly different from either MDD or HC.
Conclusions:
Patients with MDD and AnD have a distinctive difficulty with the recognition of facial expressions. The recognition of complex emotions in patients with MDD and AnD should be studied further.
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