Emotion Recognition

BPD group (33) inpatients - mean age both groups 30, 3 & 2 men respectively.

Control group (32) controlled for factors such as education, socioeconomic status, age, other demographics

Hypothesis 1: Emotion perception impairment in BPD is specific to the negative emotion domain.

Hypothesis 2: BPD patients would show error patterns in a facial emotion recognition task more commonly and more systematically than healthy comparison subjects.

Ekman 60 Faces Test

Symptom Checklist 90 Revised

Young Schema Questionnaire Long Form

Ability to correctly recognize emotion in others is critical for social functioning. Incorrect interpretations damage social relationships.

As errors are made in emotion recognition, BPD often process the information in a biased manner (negative valence).

Happiness (positive) BPD=control

Surprise BPD>control

Fear (negative) BPD<control

Sadness (negative) BPD<control

Anger (negative) BPD<control

Disgust (negative) BPD<control

Disconnection and rejection

Impaired autonomy and performance

Impaired limits

Other-directedness

Overvigilance and inhibition

RESULTS: BPD worse than control z=5.4, p<0.0001. BPD got 80.8% correct (SD=39.4%) compared to control 92.3% (SD=26.7%).

BPD almost never labeled negative emotions incorrectly as happiness.

BPD labeled more faces with disgust (incorrectly) than control

BPD labeled fewer faces as sadness than control (consistent with abandonment fear)

BPD labeled fewer faces as fear than control (consistent with abandonment fear)

BPD more often labeled surprise as fear compared with control who were more likely to labeled fear as surprise if incorrect

Interventions targeting differentiation and labeling of emotion (particularly negative emotions) could be beneficial component of therapy for BPD.