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Effects of acute social stress on emotion processing in children
Chen, Frances S. Schmitz, Julian Domes, Gregor Tuschen-Caffier, Brunna Heinrichs, Markus
Chen, Frances S.
Schmitz, Julian
Domes, Gregor
Tuschen-Caffier, Brunna
Heinrichs, Markus
Abstract
The current study investigates the effect of a single episode of acute social stress on healthy children's processing of facial expressions of emotion. Healthy nine- and ten-year-old boys (N = 39) underwent either a standardized psychosocial laboratory stressor (the Trier Social Stress Test for Children) or a control condition without exposure to socio-evaluative stress. Immediately thereafter, they classified pictures of faces displaying ambiguous facial expressions. Boys who had undergone the stress procedure were more likely to categorize ambiguously angry-fearful faces as fearful (and simultaneously less likely to categorize them as angry) relative to boys who had undergone the control condition. We suggest (i) that decreased sensitivity to anger cues following a stressful experience may represent an adaptive coping mechanism in healthy children, and/or (ii) that a heightened sensitivity to fearful cues may indicate the influence of children's own emotional states on their interpretations of others’ emotional states.
Keywords
early experience, social stress, emotional expressions, face processing, attention bias
Date
2014
Type
Journal article
Journal
Psychoneuroendocrinology
Book
Volume
40
Issue
1
Page Range
91-95
Article Number
ACU Department
School of Behavioural and Health Sciences
Faculty of Health Sciences
Faculty of Health Sciences
Relation URI
Source URL
Event URL
Open Access Status
License
File Access
Controlled