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The effects of gender, age, schooling, and cultural background on the identification of facial emotions: a transcultural study

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 May 2018

Leonardo Cruz de Souza ,
Maxime Bertoux ,
Ângelo Ribeiro Vaz de Faria ,
Laiane Tábata Souza Corgosinho ,
Ana Carolina de Almeida Prado ,
Izabela Guimarães Barbosa ,
Paulo Caramelli ,
Enrico Colosimo  and
Antônio Lúcio Teixeira
Leonardo Cruz de Souza*
Affiliation:
Programa de Pós-Graduação em Neurociências, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais (UFMG), Belo Horizonte, MG, Brazil Departamento de Clínica Médica, Faculdade de Medicina da UFMG, Belo Horizonte, MG, Brazil Laboratório Interdisciplinar de Investigação Médica, Faculdade de Medicina da UFMG, Belo Horizonte, MG, Brazil
Maxime Bertoux
Affiliation:
Centre Mémoire de Ressources et de Recherche (CMRR), University Hospital of Lille (France) & Inserm U1171, Lille, France
Ângelo Ribeiro Vaz de Faria
Affiliation:
Laboratório Interdisciplinar de Investigação Médica, Faculdade de Medicina da UFMG, Belo Horizonte, MG, Brazil
Laiane Tábata Souza Corgosinho
Affiliation:
Laboratório Interdisciplinar de Investigação Médica, Faculdade de Medicina da UFMG, Belo Horizonte, MG, Brazil
Ana Carolina de Almeida Prado
Affiliation:
Laboratório Interdisciplinar de Investigação Médica, Faculdade de Medicina da UFMG, Belo Horizonte, MG, Brazil
Izabela Guimarães Barbosa
Affiliation:
Programa de Pós-Graduação em Neurociências, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais (UFMG), Belo Horizonte, MG, Brazil Laboratório Interdisciplinar de Investigação Médica, Faculdade de Medicina da UFMG, Belo Horizonte, MG, Brazil Departamento de Saúde Mental, Faculdade de Medicina da UFMG, Belo Horizonte, MG, Brazil
Paulo Caramelli
Affiliation:
Programa de Pós-Graduação em Neurociências, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais (UFMG), Belo Horizonte, MG, Brazil Departamento de Clínica Médica, Faculdade de Medicina da UFMG, Belo Horizonte, MG, Brazil
Enrico Colosimo
Affiliation:
Departamento de Estatística, UFMG, Belo Horizonte, MG, Brazil
Antônio Lúcio Teixeira
Affiliation:
Programa de Pós-Graduação em Neurociências, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais (UFMG), Belo Horizonte, MG, Brazil Departamento de Clínica Médica, Faculdade de Medicina da UFMG, Belo Horizonte, MG, Brazil Laboratório Interdisciplinar de Investigação Médica, Faculdade de Medicina da UFMG, Belo Horizonte, MG, Brazil
*
Correspondence should be addressed to: Leonardo Cruz de Souza, Faculdade de Medicina, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais. Avenida Professor Alfredo Balena, no. 190/sl 243, Santa Efigênia, Belo Horizonte, MG CEP 30.130-100, Brazil. Phone number: + 55 31 3409 8073. E-mail: leocruzsouza@hotmail.com.
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Abstract

Background:

Social cognition tasks, such as identification of emotions, can contribute to the diagnosis of neuropsychiatric disorders. The wide use of Facial Emotion Recognition Test (FERT) is hampered by the absence of normative dataset and by the limited understanding of how demographic factors such as age, education, gender, and cultural background may influence the performance on the test.

Methods:

We analyzed the influence of these variables in the performance in the FERT from the short version of the Social and Emotional Assessment. This task is composed by 35 pictures with 7 different emotions presented 5 times each. Cognitively healthy Brazilian participants (n = 203; 109 females and 94 males) underwent the FERT. We compared the performance of participants across gender, age, and educational subgroups. We also compared the performance of Brazilians with a group of French subjects (n = 60) matched for gender, age, and educational level.

Results:

There was no gender difference regarding the performance on total score and in each emotion subscore in the Brazilian sample. We found a significant effect of aging and schooling on the performance on the FERT, with younger and more educated subjects having higher scores. Brazilian and French participants did not differ in the FERT and its subscores. Normative data for employing the FERT in Brazilian population is presented.

Conclusions:

Data here provided may contribute to the interpretation of the results of FERT in different cultural contexts and highlight the common bias that should be corrected in the future tasks to be developed.

Keywords

emotioncognitionsocial cognition
Type
Original Research Article
Information
International Psychogeriatrics , Volume 30 , Issue 12: Issue Theme: Positive Psychiatry , December 2018 , pp. 1861 - 1870
Copyright
Copyright © International Psychogeriatric Association 2018 

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