Facial Emotion Recognition in Anorexia Nervosa

Completed

• Conditions: Anorexia Nervosa
• Interventions: Other: Facial Emotion Recognition Test

• Registration Number: NCT06299293
• Lead Sponsor: Istituto Auxologico Italiano

Brief Summary

Altered emotional processing is reported in Anorexia Nervosa. However, this capability is generally measured through explicit measures, like self-report questionnaires and facial emotion recognition tasks. Instead, no previous research has investigated implicit emotional processing in this clinical condition. In the implicit facial emotion recognition task grounded on the implicit "redundant target effect", individuals generally respond faster when two identical targets are presented simultaneously rather than when presented alone; moreover, the competitive presence of a distractor (that is another emotion or a neutral expression) affects the correct recognition of the target. The ability to recognize and detect facial expressions is explored about two main emotions, fear and anger, because of their role in the intra- and interindividual psychological processing.

Detailed Description

Not available

Study Timeline

• Study Start: 2023-02-01
• Primary Completion: 2024-02-01
• Study Completion: 2024-02-01
• Study First Submitted: 2024-02-28
• Status Verified: 2024-03
• Study First Submitted QC: 2024-03-06
• Last Update Submitted: 2024-03-06
• Study First Posted: 2024-03-07
• Last Update Posted: 2024-03-07

Recruitment & Eligibility

• Status: COMPLETED
• Sex: Female
• Target Recruitment: 40

Inclusion Criteria

• right-handed
• diagnosis of Anorexia Nervosa according to the APA criteria

Exclusion criteria:

• concurrent neurological, neurodevelopmental (e.g., autism), motor, somatosensory and/or psychiatric disorders.

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Exclusion Criteria

Not provided

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Study & Design

• Study Type: OBSERVATIONAL
• Study Design: Not specified

Arm && Interventions

Group	Intervention	Description
Cases	Facial Emotion Recognition Test	Participants with Anorexia Nervosa
Controls	Facial Emotion Recognition Test	Participants with a healthy weight

Primary Outcome Measures

Name	Time	Method
Behavioural measure relative to recognition ability	baseline	Level of accuracy expressed in percentage (min =%; max = 100%) about only the valid trails, in the case of emotion used as target.

Secondary Outcome Measures

Name	Time	Method
Behavioural measure relative to the detection ability	baseline	Reaction time (i.e., time of response from the onset of the visual stimulus) expressed in milliseconds relative to the valid response for the targeted emotion

Trial Locations

Locations (1)

IRCCS Istituto Auxologico Italiano - Ospedale San Giuseppe; 🇮🇹 Piancavallo, VCO, Italy