(Hare, 1998), Might Be Particularly Insensitive To The Affective Signal Communicated Via Nonverbal Behaviors. People Suffering From A Dependency To Alcohol Are Renown To Present Important Difficulties In Their Social And Intimate Relationships, Di...
Facial Expression Decoding Deficits in Clinical Populations with Interpersonal Relationship Dysfunctions The existentialist French philosopher, Jean-Paul Sartre is famous for his statement "Hell is the others." This pessimistic stance is actually an "a contrario" claim that the secret of happiness rests, at least partly, in the way we relate to others. At an even more basic level in our social species, interactive adjustment to and coordination with others are central to our survival. Successful interaction, adjustment, and coordination with others depend upon many emotional processes, and more specifically on emotional communication and coordination. A failure to adequately communicate one's emotional and motivational state and/or to accurately perceive the internal state of others is likely to result in interpersonal and personal problems. This notion is supported by theories and empirical data relating nonverbal social skills and more general social competence, or psychopathology (e.g., Perez & Riggio, 2003). Indeed, several lines of research have demonstrated that the capacity to accurately decode facial expression is an acquired skill that developsuntil adolescence (Gross & Ballif, 1991). Further, this skill is related to more general social skills in adults (Patterson, 1999) as well as in children (Philippot & Feldman, 1990). Poor skills in decoding emotional facial expression have been related to clinical conditions as various as depression (Bouhuys, 2003), alcohol dependency (Philippot, Kornreich & Blairy, 2003), or schizophrenia (Kring& Earnst, 2003). However, the causal direction of this relation remains an open issue: Are some clinical conditions a consequence of a basic emotional deficit, such as a deficit in decoding nonverbal expression of emotion, or is this latter deficit the consequence of the clinical condition? One can speculate that many interpersonal problems might result from a deficit in decoding facial...
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