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Emotion recognition in girls with conduct problems

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Abstract

A deficit in emotion recognition has been suggested to underlie conduct problems. Although several studies have been conducted on this topic so far, most concentrated on male participants. The aim of the current study was to compare recognition of morphed emotional faces in girls with conduct problems (CP) with elevated or low callous-unemotional (CU+ vs. CU−) traits and a matched healthy developing control group (CG). Sixteen girls with CP-CU+, 16 girls with CP-CU− and 32 controls (mean age: 13.23 years, SD = 2.33 years) were included. Video clips with morphed faces were presented in two runs to assess emotion recognition. Multivariate analysis of variance with the factors group and run was performed. Girls with CP-CU− needed more time than the CG to encode sad, fearful, and happy faces and they correctly identified sadness less often. Girls with CP-CU+ outperformed the other groups in the identification of fear. Learning effects throughout runs were the same for all groups except that girls with CP-CU− correctly identified fear less often in the second run compared to the first run. Results need to be replicated with comparable tasks, which might result in subgroup-specific therapeutic recommendations.

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Acknowledgments

We thank all participants and their families for their participation in the study. Our sincere thanks go to all colleagues from collaborating institutes for their cooperation and support.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Psychosomatics and Psychotherapy, Goethe-University, Deutschordenstraße 50, Frankfurt a.M, Germany

    Christina Schwenck, Angelika Gensthaler & Christine M. Freitag

  2. Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Psychosomatics and Psychotherapy, University of Würzburg, Füchsleinstraße 15, Würzburg, Germany

    Christina Schwenck, Marcel Romanos & Regina Taurines

  3. Department of Psychology, University of Würzburg, Röntgenring 10, Würzburg, Germany

    Wolfgang Schneider

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  1. Christina Schwenck
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  2. Angelika Gensthaler
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Correspondence to Christina Schwenck.

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Schwenck, C., Gensthaler, A., Romanos, M. et al. Emotion recognition in girls with conduct problems. Eur Child Adolesc Psychiatry 23, 13–22 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00787-013-0416-8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00787-013-0416-8

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