中国科学院心理研究所机构知识库

This study used a morphed categorical perception facial expression task to evaluate whether patients with depression demonstrated deficits in distinguishing boundaries between emotions. Forty-one patients with depression and 41 healthy controls took part in this study. They were administered a standardized set of morphed photographs of facial expressions with varying emotional intensities between 0% and 100% of the emotion, in 10% increments to provide a range of intensities from pleasant to unpleasant(e.g. happy to sad, happy to angry) and approach-avoidance (e.g. angry to fearful). Compared with healthy controls, the patients with depression demonstrated a rapid perception of sad expressions in happy-sad emotional continuum and demonstrated a rapid perception of angry expressions in angry-fearful emotional continuum. In addition, when facial expressions shifted from happy to angry, the depressed patients had a clear demarcation for the happy-angry continuum. Depressed patients had a perceptual bias towards unpleasant versus pleasant expressions and the hypersensitivity to angry facial signals might influence the interaction behaviors between depressed patients and others. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

This study was supported partially by the Research Fund from the Key Laboratory of Mental Health, Institute of Psychology, the Knowledge Innovation Project of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (KSCX2-EW-J-8), the National Science Foundation of China (30770723), Guangdong Natural Science Foundation (112004), and the National Basic Research Programme (973 Programme No. 2007CB512302 and 2007CB512305).