• search hit 1 of 1
Back to Result List

Reduced facial emotion recognition in overweight and obese children

  • Objective: Emotional problems often co-occur in overweight or obese children. However, questions of whether emotion recognition deficits are present and how they are reflected have only been sparsely investigated to date. Methods: Therefore, the present study included 33 overweight and obese as well as 33 normal weight elementary school children between six and ten years that were matched for sex, age and socioeconomic status. Participants were shown different emotional faces of a well-validated set of stimuli on a computer screen, which they categorized and then rated on an emotional intensity level. Key measures were categorization performance along with reaction times and emotional intelligence as well as emotional eating questionnaire ratings. Results: Overweight children exhibited lower categorization accuracy as well as longer reaction times as compared to normal weight children, while no differences in intensity ratings occurred. Reaction time to neutral facial expressions was negatively related to intrapersonal andObjective: Emotional problems often co-occur in overweight or obese children. However, questions of whether emotion recognition deficits are present and how they are reflected have only been sparsely investigated to date. Methods: Therefore, the present study included 33 overweight and obese as well as 33 normal weight elementary school children between six and ten years that were matched for sex, age and socioeconomic status. Participants were shown different emotional faces of a well-validated set of stimuli on a computer screen, which they categorized and then rated on an emotional intensity level. Key measures were categorization performance along with reaction times and emotional intelligence as well as emotional eating questionnaire ratings. Results: Overweight children exhibited lower categorization accuracy as well as longer reaction times as compared to normal weight children, while no differences in intensity ratings occurred. Reaction time to neutral facial expressions was negatively related to intrapersonal and interpersonal emotional intelligence and emotional eating correlated negatively with accuracy for recognizing sad expressions. Conclusion: Facial emotion decoding difficulties seem to be of importance in overweight and obese children and deserve further consideration in terms of their exact impact on social functioning as well as on the maintenance of elevated body weight during child development. (C) 2015 Elsevier Inc All rights reserved.show moreshow less

Export metadata

Additional Services

Search Google Scholar Statistics
Metadaten
Author details:Anne Koch, Olga Pollatos
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpsychores.2015.06.005
ISSN:0022-3999
ISSN:1879-1360
Title of parent work (English):Journal of psychosomatic research
Publisher:Elsevier
Place of publishing:Oxford
Publication type:Article
Language:English
Year of first publication:2015
Publication year:2015
Release date:2017/03/27
Tag:Childhood obesity; Emotion; Emotional expressions; Face categorization; Overweight
Volume:79
Issue:6
Number of pages:5
First page:635
Last Page:639
Funding institution:German Research Foundation (DFG) [1668/1]
Organizational units:Humanwissenschaftliche Fakultät / Strukturbereich Kognitionswissenschaften / Department Psychologie
Peer review:Referiert
Institution name at the time of the publication:Humanwissenschaftliche Fakultät / Institut für Psychologie
Accept ✔
This website uses technically necessary session cookies. By continuing to use the website, you agree to this. You can find our privacy policy here.