Poster #51 - Emotional Expression is Associated with Emotional Lability in Children with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder

• In Event: 1-005 - Poster Session 01
  In Poster Session: PS 01 Section - Developmental Psychopathology

Integrative Statement

Children with externalizing disorders such as Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) often demonstrate emotional lability, or intense shifts in affect, in addition to their behavioral symptoms (Hulvershorn, Mennes, Castellanos, Di Martino, Milham, Hummer, & Roy, 2014; Rosen, Walerius, Fogleman, & Factor, 2015). This suggests that they may suffer from deficits in overall self-control, leading to classic symptoms of hyperactivity as well as poor emotion regulation. A consistent behavioral finding in ADHD is that of reaction time variability (De la Torre, Barroso, León-Carrión, Mestre, & Bozal, 2015). Children with ADHD do not always show differences in reaction time or accuracy; however, they do exhibit greater variability in their performance (Kofler, Rapport, Sarver, Raiker, Orban, Friedman & Kolomeyer, 2013). To date, most studies on symptoms of emotional lability in children with ADHD rely on parent reports, and thus, are prone to reporting bias and only reflect the most observable emotional displays. The present study takes a novel approach to examining emotional lability by assessing variability in emotional expression, as assessed through video observations during a frustrating computer game. We predict that children with ADHD who are reported by their parents to have significant emotional lability, as evidenced by severe temper outbursts (STO), will show greater variability of negative affect intensity than children with ADHD without emotional lability, and typically developing children.

A cohort of 147 children, ages 5 to 9, who met DSM-IV criteria for ADHD with STO (n=61), ADHD without emotional lability (n=45), or who were typically developing (n=41) were recruited for a larger neuroimaging study. During their visit, they performed a simple computer game with and without emotion regulation conditions. The children were asked to ‘pop’ only the green balloons on the screen. In three of the trials, the mouse was programmed to stop working in order to induce frustration and lead to a failed trial. In the non-emotion regulation condition, children were videotaped during the game with no further instructions. In the emotion regulation condition, they were told that a colleague was going to watch the tape and we didn’t want him/her to know whether the child won or lost so they should keep their face from expressing emotion. The order of regulation and non-regulation conditions was counterbalanced. Parents completed the Six-Month Temper Tantrum Questionnaire, developed for the larger study.

FACET iMotion software utilized the FACS coding system to analyze the children’s facial expressions and predicted negative affect intensity from likely absent to high intensity at a rate of 15 frames per second (Ekman, Sorenson, & Friesen, 1969; Izard, 1971; Krumhuber, Tamarit, Roesch, & Scherer, 2012; Lee, Heller, Van Reekum, Nelson, & Davidson, 2012; Stöckli, Schulte-Mecklenbeck, Borer, & Samson, 2017).

Preliminary analyses indicated that diagnostic group differences significantly predicted the mean [F(2, 29)= 3.582, p =.041] and variability [F(2, 29)= 3.388, p=.048] of negative affect intensity. These findings extend previous work on the reaction time variability in children with ADHD into variability of emotional lability. Further understanding of emotional processing in ADHD children will allow targeted therapeutic interventions.

Authors

• Jamie Listokin, Fordham University
  Presenting Author

• Mariah Lillian DeSerisy, Fordham University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Amy Krain Roy, Fordham University
  Non-Presenting Author