scholarly journals What’s in a face? Mentalizing in borderline personality disorder based on dynamically changing facial expressions.

2016 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 72-79 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benedicte Lowyck ◽  
Patrick Luyten ◽  
Dominique Vanwalleghem ◽  
Rudi Vermote ◽  
Linda C. Mayes ◽  
...  
2021 ◽  
Vol 35 (Supplement A) ◽  
pp. 132-148
Author(s):  
Tahira Gulamani ◽  
Achala H. Rodrigo ◽  
Amanda A. Uliaszek ◽  
Anthony C. Ruocco

Emotion perception biases may precipitate problematic interpersonal interactions in families affected with borderline personality disorder (BPD) and lead to conflictual relationships. In the present study, the authors investigated the familial aggregation of facial emotion recognition biases for neutral, happy, sad, fearful, and angry expressions in probands with BPD (n = 89), first-degree biological relatives (n = 67), and healthy controls (n = 87). Relatives showed comparable accuracy and response times to controls in recognizing negative emotions in aggregate and most discrete emotions. For sad expressions, both probands and relatives displayed slower response latencies, and they were more likely than controls to perceive sad expressions as fearful. Nonpsychiatrically affected relatives were slower than controls in responding to negative emotional expressions in aggregate, and fearful and sad facial expressions more specifically. These findings uncover potential biases in perceiving sad and fearful facial expressions that may be transmitted in families affected with BPD.


2008 ◽  
Vol 39 (5) ◽  
pp. 855-864 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. Dyck ◽  
U. Habel ◽  
J. Slodczyk ◽  
J. Schlummer ◽  
V. Backes ◽  
...  

BackgroundThe ability to decode emotional information from facial expressions is crucial for successful social interaction. Borderline personality disorder (BPD) is characterized by serious problems in interpersonal relationships and emotional functioning. Empirical research on facial emotion recognition in BPD has been sparsely published and results are inconsistent. To specify emotion recognition deficits in BPD more closely, the present study implemented two emotion recognition tasks differing in response format.MethodNineteen patients with BPD and 19 healthy subjects were asked to evaluate the emotional content of visually presented stimuli (emotional and neutral faces). The first task, the Fear Anger Neutral (FAN) Test, required a rapid discrimination between negative or neutral facial expressions whereas in the second task, the Emotion Recognition (ER) Test, a precise decision regarding default emotions (sadness, happiness, anger, fear and neutral) had to be achieved without a time limit.ResultsIn comparison to healthy subjects, BPD patients showed a deficit in emotion recognition only in the fast discrimination of negative and neutral facial expressions (FAN Test). Consistent with earlier findings, patients demonstrated a negative bias in the evaluation of neutral facial expressions. When processing time was unlimited (ER Test), BPD patients performed as well as healthy subjects in the recognition of specific emotions. In addition, an association between performance in the fast discrimination task (FAN Test) and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) co-morbidity was indicated.ConclusionsOur data suggest a selective deficit of BPD patients in rapid and direct discrimination of negative and neutral emotional expressions that may underlie difficulties in social interactions.


2019 ◽  
Vol 33 (5) ◽  
pp. 671-S8 ◽  
Author(s):  
Deborah Kaiser ◽  
Gitta A. Jacob ◽  
Linda van Zutphen ◽  
Nicolette Siep ◽  
Andreas Sprenger ◽  
...  

Preliminary evidence suggests that biased attention could be crucial in fostering the emotion recognition abnormalities in borderline personality disorder (BPD). We compared BPD patients to Cluster-C personality disorder (CC) patients and non-patients (NP) regarding emotion recognition in ambiguous faces and their visual attention allocation to the eyes. The role of comorbid posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in BPD regarding emotion recognition and visual attention was explored. BPD patients fixated the eyes of angry/happy, sad/happy, and fearful/sad blends longer than non-patients. This visual attention pattern was mainly driven by BPD patients with PTSD. This subgroup also demonstrated longer fixations than CC patients and a trend towards longer fixations than BPD patients without PTSD for the angry/happy and fearful/sad blends. Emotion recognition was not altered in BPD. Biased visual attention towards the eyes of ambiguous facial expressions in BPD might be due to trauma-related attentional bias rather than to impairments in facial emotion recognition.


2018 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 29-34 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katharina Kolbeck ◽  
Lisa Schilling

Abstract. Metacognitive Training for borderline personality disorder (B-MCT) is a low-threshold group intervention program, which targets borderline-specific cognitive biases and aims to ameliorate borderline symptomatology. The goal of the intervention is to help patients with borderline personality disorder (BPD) identify and weaken (meta-)cognitive biases (e. g., monocausal reasoning, high-confident responses when interpreting facial expressions) that play a crucial role in the development and maintenance of BPD. Metacognitive training for BPD utilizes a “backdoor approach” by attenuating cognitive biases with entertaining and playful exercises. The training demonstrates patients that cognitive biases are normal to a certain extent, however, can lead to dysfunctional thinking patterns and compromise patient’s judgement when escalated. Preliminary findings confirm the feasibility, acceptance, and efficacy of B-MCT. This article describes the implementation of B-MCT in detail.


2020 ◽  
Vol 14 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jana Wiesenfeller ◽  
Vera Flasbeck ◽  
Elliot C. Brown ◽  
Martin Brüne

ObjectivesBorderline personality disorder (BPD) is portrayed by unstable relationships, fears of abandonment and heightened sensitivity to social rejection. Research has shown that these characteristics may lead to inappropriate social behavior including altered approach-avoidance behavior. However, it has remained unclear how social exclusion may affect approach-avoidance behavior in patients with BPD.DesignWe assessed social approach-avoidance behavior and the impact of social exclusion in a sample of 38 patients with BPD and 40 healthy control participants.MethodsWe used an explicit joystick-based approach-avoidance task (AAT) after playing a virtual ball-tossing game (Cyberball), which simulates the exclusion of the participant by two other players. In the AAT, participants were required to push or pull emotional stimuli, more specifically happy and angry facial expressions, with either direct or averted gaze direction.ResultsPatients with BPD approached happy stimuli less and showed overall less differential approach-avoidance behavior toward individuals expressing positive or negative facial emotions compared to healthy participants, who showed more approach behavior for happy compared to angry facial expressions. Moreover, borderline symptom severity correlated inversely with the AAT score for happy facial expressions and positively with subjective unpleasantness during social exclusion as well as rejection sensitivity. However, social exclusion did not influence approach-avoidance tendencies.ConclusionPatients with BPD showed altered approach-avoidance behavior, which might affect social interactions in the patient’s everyday lives and may therefore impede social interaction.


2020 ◽  
Vol 34 (5) ◽  
pp. 677-698 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin Vestergaard ◽  
Mickey T. Kongerslev ◽  
Marianne S. Thomsen ◽  
Birgit Bork Mathiesen ◽  
Catherine J. Harmer ◽  
...  

Individuals with borderline personality disorder (BPD) frequently display impairments in the identification of emotional facial expressions paralleled by a negativity bias. However, it remains unclear whether misperception of facial expressions is a key psychopathological marker of BPD. To address this question, the authors examined 43 women diagnosed with BPD and 56 healthy female controls using an emotion face identification task and a face dot-probe task together with measures on psychopathology. Compared to controls, women with BPD showed impaired identification of disgusted and angry faces concurrent with a bias to misclassify faces as angry, and a faster preconscious vigilance for fearful relative to happy facial expressions. Increased severity of borderline symptoms and global psychopathology in BPD patients were associated with reduced ability to identify angry facial expressions and a stronger negativity bias to anger. The findings indicate that BPD patients who misperceive face emotions have the greatest mental health issues.


Emotion ◽  
2006 ◽  
Vol 6 (4) ◽  
pp. 647-655 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas R. Lynch ◽  
M. Zachary Rosenthal ◽  
David S. Kosson ◽  
Jennifer S. Cheavens ◽  
C. W. Lejuez ◽  
...  

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Javier Villanueva-Valle ◽  
José-Luis Díaz ◽  
Said Jiménez ◽  
Andrés Rodríguez-Delgado ◽  
Iván Arango de Montis ◽  
...  

Videotape recordings obtained during an initial and conventional psychiatric interview were used to assess possible emotional differences in facial expressions and acoustic parameters of the voice between Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) female patients and matched controls. The incidence of seven basic emotion expressions, emotional valence, heart rate, and vocal frequency (f0), and intensity (dB) of the discourse adjectives and interjections were determined through the application of computational software to the visual (FaceReader) and sound (PRAAT) tracks of the videotape recordings. The extensive data obtained were analyzed by three statistical strategies: linear multilevel modeling, correlation matrices, and exploratory network analysis. In comparison with healthy controls, BPD patients express a third less sadness and show a higher number of positive correlations (14 vs. 8) and a cluster of related nodes among the prosodic parameters and the facial expressions of anger, disgust, and contempt. In contrast, control subjects showed negative or null correlations between such facial expressions and prosodic parameters. It seems feasible that BPD patients restrain the facial expression of specific emotions in an attempt to achieve social acceptance. Moreover, the confluence of prosodic and facial expressions of negative emotions reflects a sympathetic activation which is opposed to the social engagement system. Such BPD imbalance reflects an emotional alteration and a dysfunctional behavioral strategy that may constitute a useful biobehavioral indicator of the severity and clinical course of the disorder. This face/voice/heart rate emotional expression assessment (EMEX) may be used in the search for reliable biobehavioral correlates of other psychopathological conditions.


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