The effect of individual differences on emotion recognition from faces and voices

Abstract

Childhood trauma is a serious public health issue with 1 in 5 adults experiencing childhood abuse and 1 in 10 adults experiencing neglect in the UK. Abuse and neglect in childhood can lead to various cognitive deficits which persist into adulthood, with emotion recognition abilities being a key one. This is an issue as emotion recognition deficits can lead to inappropriate behaviour and poor quality relationships, and as social beings we rely on our social networks for our health and well-being. Childhood trauma can also lead to the development of alexithymia (difficulties identifying own emotions) and psychopathy traits. These traits are also associated with emotion deficits which makes it difficult to pinpoint which individual difference the deficits originate from. Thus, it is unclear whether the relationship between childhood trauma and emotion recognition is influenced by these co-morbid traits. It is also unclear how universal this relationship is across various situations. Therefore, the thesis explores the relationship between childhood trauma and emotion recognition, whilst controlling for alexithymia and psychopathy traits, across various stimulus-based factors. The research methodology will contribute to and extend the current literature by employing more realistic (e.g., moving expressions) and comprehensive stimuli (e.g., across various modalities, intensities, and emotions expressed). The thesis presents 4 experiments: Experiment 1 explores the relationship between childhood trauma and emotion recognition, intensity ratings, and sensitivity to intensity and how these were influenced by alexithymia and psychopathy traits and the stimulus-based factors of modality, emotion expressed, and intensity; Experiment 2 explores whether the relationship between childhood trauma, emotion recognition and eye movements was influenced by alexithymia and psychopathy traits and the stimulus-based factors of modality (stimulus presentation), emotion expressed, and intensity; Experiment 3 explores whether the relationship between childhood trauma and emotion recognition and intensity ratings, when integrating emotion cues, was influenced by alexithymia and psychopathy traits and the stimulus-based factors of modality focus, emotion expressed, and congruence; Experiment 4 explores whether (4a) the effect of childhood trauma, whilst controlling for alexithymia and psychopathy traits, or (4b) an ethnicity match/mismatch and attitudes towards masks influenced emotion recognition of masked and unmasked faces varying in emotion expressed. The overall findings suggest that the significant relationship between childhood trauma and poorer emotion recognition was reduced or non-significant after controlling for alexithymia and psychopathy traits. Also, the effect of childhood trauma on emotion recognition accuracy was relatively consistent across stimulus-based factors. The findings indicate that the effect of childhood trauma varies across different stages of the emotion recognition process. Specifically, it may impact later processes, involving higher-level perceptions, such as integrating emotion cues and labelling of expressions, but no significant impact on earlier lower-level processes, such as where we look within the face to recognise an expression. The findings have theoretical and practical implications of updating current models to include alexithymia as a key influence on the relationship between childhood trauma and emotion deficits, as well as informing interventions to focus on later stages/higher-level perceptions as this is where the difficulites lie. Future research should continue controlling for co-morbid traits as well as utilising more realistic stimuli of moving emotional expressions to enhance generalisability and ecological validity of emotion recognition findings.