Facial Emotion Recognition in Anorexia Nervosa (FER_AN)

Istituto Auxologico Italiano

Status: Completed

Conditions: Anorexia Nervosa

Treatments: Other: Facial Emotion Recognition Test

Study type: Observational

Funder types: Other

Identifiers

NCT06299293

21C306

Details and patient eligibility

About

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.

Enrollment: 40 patients

Sex: Female

Ages: 20 to 50 years old

Volunteers: Accepts Healthy Volunteers

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.

Trial design

40 participants in 2 patient groups

Cases

Description:

Participants with Anorexia Nervosa

Treatment:

Other: Facial Emotion Recognition Test

Controls

Description:

Participants with a healthy weight

Treatment:

Other: Facial Emotion Recognition Test