Recognition of facial affect by children and adolescents diagnosed with social phobia

This study compared the ability of children with social phobia and children with no psychiatric disorder to accurately judge facial affect. Fifteen ch ildren and adolescents with social phobia and 14 control children were aske d to identify emotions depicted in slides from the Pictures of Facial Affec t. In addition, they rated their level of anxiety on a pictorial Likert sca le prior to and upon completion of the facial recognition task. The results indicated that children with social phobia had significantly poorer facial affect recognition skills than normal controls and reported greater anxiet y upon completion of the recognition task. Multivariate analysis revealed s ignificant differences between groups in the number of errors based on the type of facial affect. Posthoc analysis indicated that deficits were most p ronounced for facial representations of happiness, sadness, and disgust. Th e results are discussed in relation to an integrated model of social skills training that includes facial affect recognition training as a integral co mponent in treatment programs for children and adolescents with social phob ia. Directions for future research with larger samples of more ethnically d iverse children and adolescents are presented.