Facial Emotion Recognition

A component of the alexithymia construct, emotion differentiation is the ability to identify and label emotional experiences into discrete categories (Boden et al., 2013). (Note: Emotion differentiation has also been referred to as emotion granularity; Barrett, 2006; Tugade, Fredrickson, & Barrett, 2004). Individuals high in emotion differentiation can make subtle distinctions between their emotions; for example, they can distinguish between feelings of anger, frustration, or annoyance. Individuals with low emotion differentiation, however, may interpret all emotions in a broad, more general manner, such as simply claiming they feel “upset” or “bad” (Barrett, Gross, Christensen, & Benvenuto, 2001; Boden et al., 2013). Although it may only represent a portion of

In today’s session, group members learned about how thoughts and emotions contribute to behavior, and how to observe, analyze and responses to those thoughts and emotions in different ways. The common behavior traits that related to substance use were discussed, as well.

The physical benefits of sobriety are impressive, but the emotional benefits are equally noteworthy. Addiction has been shown to alter the brain’s circuitry and, even more frighteningly, gene expression. These changes impact human behavior and interfere with your ability to make voluntary decisions, which causes you to focus all of your time and energy on seeking out and using drugs or alcohol. Needless to say, individuals who struggle with addiction also suffer from low self-esteem and low mood.

Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test (RMET; Baron-Cohen, Wheelwright, Hill, Raste, & Plumb, 2001). The RMET is a 36 item task used to assess participants ability to infer the mental state of others or ToM. It consists of 36 images of the eye region displaying a wide range of positive, negative and complex expressions of emotions. Participants must select which of the four words presented best describes the emotion portrayed in the image. Higher scores indicate a greater capacity to understand the mental states of others. There is evidence for reliability and validity of the RMET as a measure of ToM (Baron-Cohen et al.,

Alcohol Use Disorder (AUD) is classified as a Substance Use Disorder (SUD), to concentrate on one specific substance this paper will focus its attention on AUD. Even though people use a variety of substances to alter their mood, alcohol is typically the substance that can found without leaving the persons house. Therefore, most teenagers begin their experimentation of substances by using alcohol which their parents have in the home. Fuehrlein et al. (2016) reports, in a survey of 2,000 people with another mental health disorder were more likely to be comorbid for some form of an addiction disorder, 22.3% was specifically for alcohol use disorder. Although, not everyone who experiments with alcohol as a teenager develops a disorder

The researchers assessed the participant’s use of alcohol, level of stress, and level of impulsiveness. The study reported that stress and impulsiveness were negatively correlated, while mindfulness and treatment of alcohol abuse had a positive relationship. Ostafin, Bauer, and Myxter (2012) reported similar results in their study reflecting 41 undergraduate students. The researchers analyzed the effects automatic alcohol motivation had with heavy drinking and whether mindfulness could decrease the relationship between the two. When mindfulness audios were given to the participants to listen to, there was reported decreases in the correlation between automatic alcohol motivations and heavy drinking. Vinci et al. (2014) also reported in a study containing 207 college students with a risk of binge drinking that mindfulness could decrease one’s negative affect, increase mindfulness and relaxation, and have a stronger affect towards college students that are deemed at-risk for binge drinking. Nevertheless, not all studies involving substance abuse and college students have shown a strong correlation between meditation and substance abuse. In a study involving 198 undergraduate college students, Leigh, Bowen, and Marlatt (2005) assessed the correlations between mindfulness, spirituality, and substance abuse to increase the knowledge of the relationships between the three components; however, the researchers reported no correlation was found for

Concurrently, pharmacological treatment efficacy has been assessed heavily within academic texts. The present essay will incorporate a multitude of these findings, in order to appraise the effectiveness of current addiction prevention proposals in determining empirically and clinically substantive degeneration of the largely aggressive symptoms, and the possible detrimental short and long-term effects, correlated with addiction to opiates, nicotine, cocaine, and alcohol.

This feeling of escape allows people to ignore the central problem and the negative emotions such as feeling of guilt, pain, anger, and sadness. By continuing to relief emotions and feel this short-term pleasure, it can “lead to disregard of adverse consequences and long-term damage which in turn increases the apparent need for the addictive activity as a coping strategy” (Griffiths, 2005). We can connect the feeling of escape though some of the coping strategies which include defense mechanisms such as denial, displacement, and rationalization. For an example, an addict might use the coping strategy rationalization by saying they drink because of the built up anger at work and need to relax. When in fact, they are drinking because they are an alcoholic, but in their own mind, they are giving an excuse to try and justify their actions. Based on how addiction is often used on a means of escape, professionals need to be aware about addicts’ psychological thoughts when helping them to overcome the addiction. From there, professionals can see how a person’s environment may or may not influence their thoughts and behaviors for their

The emotional stage of relapse is probably the most-tricky. Most individuals are unaware that it’s even happening. Something as simple as a song, smell or memory can open a flood gate that they have no control over. Emotions can take the brain through mazes of all too familiar triggers, which can open all the doorways for going back to substance use. Some types of emotions to be aware of in this stage include anxiety, depression, irritability, anger, frustration and mood swings.

Perception is based on using our senses to gain an impression of someone or something. We then use information from sensory inputs to analyze and make decisions on our view of that person or subject. There are many factors which influence the way we perceive people. The nature of the perceiver and the nature of the situation are two such factors referenced in this week's material (Hitt, Miller & Colella, 2015). The nature of the perceiver is broken down into three key areas; familiarity with the other person, feelings toward the other person, and general emotional state of the perceiver (Hitt, Miller & Colella, 2015). Familiarity with the other person bases perceptions on the length of time the perceiver has know people, and the perceiver's adaptability to change or adapt to variances in longstanding

situation is crucial to modifying the substance use expectancies and self-efficacy (Marlatt & Gordon, 1985). As briefly mentioned early, Baker and colleagues suggested that the motivation for drug use is primaryly to avoid negative experiences (Baker, Piper, McCarthy, Majeskie, & Foire, 2004). The association between negative emotion and drinking was quickly learned as a way of avoiding negative feelings. Hayes et al. (1996) defined emotional avoidance as the attempt to change the form or frequency of unpleasant states by ignoring or distorting bodily sensations, emotions, thoughts, or memories. This strategy is so commonly used due to the constant reinforcement of its short-term effects of distraction and suppression, although it is often ineffective in the long term to change the unpleasant emotions (Hayes, Wilson, Gifford, Follette, & Strosahl, 1996).

This literature review examined how facial perception affects emotions. In particular, how processing facial cues, emotional understanding, and perception of others can change cross culturally. Martin, Slessor, Allen, Phillips, and Darling (2012) suggested that processing facial cues can actually provide the person who is perceiving them with a lot of information related to emotional state and even identity of a person. When people process a face they tend to use local (feature based) rather than global (holistic) processing orientation to assess the face and recognize emotions, such as a smile which would infer happiness. Facial recognition skills are an easy and almost subconscious factor to understanding emotions was the overall conclusion which provides support for the theory of basic emotions (BET). Vytal & Hamann (2010) stated that the BET is a set of mental modules that are emotion specific that exist for identifying and interpreting basic emotional states like happiness, sadness, and even anger (as cited in Strand, Downs, Barbara-leiker, 2016). In conclusion, the research currently suggests that understanding emotions is a more local (feature based) way that people process emotions automatically.

For the purpose of this paper I will utilize the concept of substance abuse, but I will mostly be referring to alcohol as this is what most of the research is based on.

In all actuality, these scientists retain of alcoholism is more heredity rather than an addiction, since they look at it as a “neuroanatomical” this focuses on the individuals affects of emotions of happiness or melancholy. Researchers indicate the basics of what they call

Participants were tested in groups of 10, seated so to avoid overlooking others. They completed two facial recognition tasks and other three cognitive tasks. Total testing time per subject was 60 min and the test procedure was as follows.