Cognitive processing of facial affect: Connectionist model of deviations in schizophrenia.

Connectionist-model simulations of competing hypotheses of cognition in schizophrenia were constructed and tested. Emphasis was placed on judgment of affect, a prominent area of disturbance in this disorder with potential implications for social impairment. Participants with paranoid or nonparanoid schizophrenia and control participants provided judgments of affect as expressed in photographic faces. Schizophrenia groups were less accurate than control groups, and the paranoid group had greater latencies than did other groups. Model predictions simultaneously addressed judgment content and latencies for each trial. Results provide a connectionist extension of an account of deficits in schizophrenia that originated at the computational (stochastic modeling) level of analysis. This account postulates extra stages of item encoding but no reduction in formally defined processing capacity. It also provides for abnormalities in both judgment patterns and duration and is consistent with biological accounts of schizophrenia deficits. The substantive findings are supported by strategic innovations in the construction and testing of connectionist models. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Sex-related differences in event-related potentials, face recognition, and facial affect processing in prepubertal children.

Thirty-five prepubertal children, 17 boys and 18 girls, between the ages of 8 and 11 years, were studied to examine electrophysiological and cognitive sex differences during a face-recognition-memory (FRM) task and a facial-affect-identification task (FAIT). All participants were prepubertal, as determined by J. M. Tanner's (1962) staging and endocrine evaluation. Sex-dependent event-related potential (ERP) amplitude asymmetries were found during FRM. Boys displayed greater right versus left ERP amplitude to auditory tone probes during the task, whereas girls displayed the opposite pattern. In addition, positive correlations were obtained between ERP amplitude during FRM and FAIT accuracy scores for boys, but not for girls. Results suggest that girls and boys may use different neuronal systems in the processing of faces and facial affect. Findings are consistent with developmental theories regarding sex differences in visuospatial processing. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Culture, ethnicity, and children's facial expressions: A study of European American, mainland Chinese, Chinese American, and adopted Chinese girls.

This investigation extends previous research documenting differences in Chinese and European American infants' facial expressivity. Chinese girls adopted by European American families, nonadopted Mainland Chinese girls, nonadopted Chinese American girls, and nonadopted European American girls responded to emotionally evocative slides and an odor stimulus. European American girls smiled more than Mainland Chinese and Chinese American girls and scored higher than Mainland Chinese girls for disgust-related expressions and overall expressivity. Adopted Chinese girls produced more disgust-related expressions than Mainland Chinese girls. Self-reported maternal strictness, aggravation, positive expressiveness, and cultural identification correlated with children's facial responses, as did number of siblings and adults in the home. Results suggest that culture and family environment influences facial expressivity, creating differences among children of the same ethnicity. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)