Trauma exposure and posttraumatic stress symptoms (PTSS) are associated with biases in emotional face processing. Existing research has utilized a variety of methodological techniques to demonstrate hyperreactivity to threatening cues in posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD; i.e., fearful faces), but studies to date have shown conflicting findings, including both increased and decreased time fixating on fearful faces. Moreover, the impact of PTSS severity on emotional face processing in the general population is unknown, as the generalizability of prior work is limited. The current study aimed to examine the associations between PTSS and sensitivity to detecting differences in fearful, angry, and happy faces in a large international sample. Participants were 1,182 visitors (M_age = 31.13 years, SD = 13.57, range: 18–85 years) to TestMyBrain.org who completed three emotion sensitivity tasks and the PTSD Checklist for DSM-5. The results indicated that higher PTSS scores were associated with poorer performance in detecting happiness, fear, and anger, ps < .001, with the largest effect for fear, f ² = .06, controlling for age and gender. Participants who experienced more recent and more direct trauma exposure displayed higher levels of PTSS, with a small but significant effect whereby more direct trauma exposure was associated with higher (i.e., better) scores for anger and fear, f²s = .02. Women showed heightened sensitivity to detecting fear compared to men, d = 0.17. The present findings underscore the value of citizen science initiatives that allow researchers to obtain clinical data from diverse samples with a high degree of PTSS variability.

中文翻译：

---

在大型国际样本中，创伤后应激症状的严重程度与情绪面孔处理受损有关


创伤暴露和创伤后应激症状（PTSS）与情绪面部处理的偏差有关。现有的研究已经利用多种方法论技术来证明创伤后应激障碍（PTSD；即恐惧的面孔）对威胁线索的过度反应，但迄今为止的研究显示了相互矛盾的发现，包括注视恐惧的面孔的时间增加和减少。此外，PTSS 严重程度对普通人群情绪面部处理的影响尚不清楚，因为先前工作的普遍性有限。当前的研究旨在检验 PTSS 与检测大型国际样本中恐惧、愤怒和快乐面孔差异的敏感性之间的关联。参与者为 TestMyBrain.org 的 1,182 名访客（ M_年龄= 31.13 岁， SD = 13.57，范围：18-85 岁），他们完成了三项情绪敏感性任务和DSM-5的 PTSD 检查表。结果表明，较高的 PTSS 分数与检测快乐、恐惧和愤怒的较差表现相关， p s < .001，其中对恐惧的影响最大， f ² = .06（控制年龄和性别）。最近经历过更直接创伤的参与者表现出更高水平的 PTSS，其影响虽小但显着，即更直接的创伤暴露与更高（即更好）的愤怒和恐惧分数相关， f ² s = 0.02。与男性相比，女性对恐惧的敏感度更高， d = 0.17。 目前的研究结果强调了公民科学倡议的价值，这些倡议使研究人员能够从具有高度 PTSS 变异性的不同样本中获取临床数据。