Poster #163 - Attention Training Improves Children’s Ratings of Emotional Intensity

• In Event: 1-005 - Poster Session 01
  In Poster Session: PS 01 Section - Prevention and Interventions

Integrative Statement

The ability to accurately recognize other’s expressions of emotion is a critical skill, with profound implications for social adaptation. Training programs designed to improve social functioning typically attempt to direct attention toward or away from certain facial configurations, or to improve discrimination between emotions by categorizing facial expressions. However, emotion recognition involves processes in addition to attentional orienting or categorical labeling. The intensity with which someone is experiencing an emotion is also influential; knowing whether someone is annoyed or enraged will guide an observer’s response. Furthermore, most training paradigms provide participants with only general feedback regarding whether they responded correctly or incorrectly; it is possible that more informative feedback that indicates the magnitude of one’s response error may improve the effectiveness of training programs. Here, we examined a novel approach to training that provided corrective and individualized feedback to improve children’s accuracy in rating the intensity of emotions conveyed through faces.

To date, 29 children (Mage = 8.45, SD = 1.06; 62% female) completed an attention training task designed to improve accuracy in rating emotional intensity in facial expressions. Participants first completed a baseline task where they viewed facial expressions morphed from anger to happiness on a continuum of five-percent increments. Participants viewed faces one at a time and rated how angry or happy each was on a visual analog scale. Next, participants received training where they received corrective feedback after each response (Fig. 1). Next, participants completed a post-training assessment that was equivalent to the baseline task. Children then returned to complete just the baseline and training portions of the task for three consecutive days and finally, returned to complete the post-training assessment follow-up for a fifth time, one week later.

Data from this experiment demonstrated that children’s accuracy in rating emotional intensity in facial expressions improved following multiple sessions of emotion intensity training, F(1, 24) = -7.77, p < .001 (Fig. 2). Comparing performance by day, children showed improvement from baseline to post-training on day one (p = .033). Performance improved on days two through four, as well as one week following day four, relative to baseline on day one (all ps < .001). Moreover, children’s ratings on days two through five were no different from one another (ps > .09).

The current study found that training children to attend to distinctions in the way different intensities of emotion are conveyed in the face was effective at improving accuracy in this skill. This training paradigm focuses on improving accuracy in rating emotion intensity as opposed to categorical recognition of specific emotions. Further, these findings provide evidence that multiple training sessions can result in lasting effects. Typically, standard interventions are implemented in adulthood, long after the onset of psychopathology. However, understanding developmental differences in treatment response is important in designing appropriate interventions for children and adolescents. It is the hope that these findings lend support for the study and use of early interventions to reduce problematic behaviors before the onset of more severe psychopathology later in life.

Authors

• Brian Leitzke, University of Wisconsin - Madison
  Presenting Author

• Rista C Plate, University of Wisconsin-Madison
  Non-Presenting Author

• Seth D Pollak, University of Wisconsin-Madison
  Non-Presenting Author