OBJECTIVE The current study examined whether children with a social anxiety disorder (SAD) demonstrate divergent facial emotion processing and a disorder-specific negative interpretation bias in the processing of facial emotional expressions. This study aimed to overcome previous study limitations by including both a nonsocially anxious control group and a healthy control group to examine whether childhood SAD is characterized by a general emotion labeling deficit, and/or by a negative interpretation bias, indicated by systematic misclassifications, or a lower threshold for recognizing threatening emotions. METHOD Participants were 132 children aged 7-12 years (Mage = 9.15; 45.5% female). Children with SAD (n = 42) were compared to children with other, nonsocial, anxiety disorders (n = 40) and healthy control children (n = 50) on a novel facial emotion recognition task. Children judged ambiguous happy/neutral, angry/neutral and fear/neutral faces that were morphed at different intensities (10%, 30%, 50%, 70%). RESULTS Children with SAD did not differ from other groups in their accuracy of identifying emotions. They did not show systematic misclassifications or a heightened sensitivity to negative, threatening faces either. Rather, children with nonsocial anxiety disorders showed a generally heightened sensitivity to emotional faces. CONCLUSIONS The current study does not provide evidence for a general deficit in labeling of emotional faces in childhood SAD. Childhood SAD was not characterized by an interpretation bias in processing emotional faces. Children with nonsocial anxiety disorders may benefit from assistance in accurately interpreting the degree of emotionality in interpersonal situations.

中文翻译：

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面对不确定性：儿童社交焦虑症中模棱两可的情绪面孔的解读。

目标 当前的研究检查了患有社交焦虑症 (SAD) 的儿童是否在面部情绪表达的处理中表现出不同的面部情绪处理和特定于疾病的负面解释偏差。本研究旨在通过包括非社交焦虑对照组和健康对照组来克服先前的研究局限性，以检查儿童 SAD 是否具有一般情绪标签缺陷和/或负面解释偏差的特征，如系统性错误分类所示，或识别威胁情绪的较低阈值。方法参与者是 132 名 7-12 岁的儿童（Mage = 9.15；45.5% 是女性）。将患有 SAD 的儿童 (n = 42) 与患有其他非社交、焦虑症 (n = 40) 和健康对照儿童 (n = 50) 进行一项新的面部情绪识别任务。儿童判断模棱两可的快乐/中性、愤怒/中性和恐惧/中性的面孔，这些面孔在不同强度下变形（10%、30%、50%、70%）。结果 患有 SAD 的儿童在识别情绪的准确性方面与其他组没有差异。他们也没有表现出系统性错误分类或对消极、威胁性面孔的高度敏感。相反，患有非社交焦虑症的儿童对情绪面孔表现出普遍更高的敏感性。结论 目前的研究并未提供证据表明儿童 SAD 中情绪面孔标记存在普遍缺陷。童年 SAD 在处理情绪面孔时并没有以解释偏见为特征。