Número Ideal de Hijos

Experiment 4 has shown that alcoholics to do not confuse fearful and neutral faces, although they do perceive a higher level of emotion with the neutral faces than non-alcoholics. In the following two experiments (6a & 6b) the aim is to assess alcoholics and non-alcoholics ratings of happy and neutral stimuli, as per the rating method of Experiment 4.

With regard to alcoholics’ performance in emotional processing tasks involving happiness, studies have concentrated on accurate identification and ability to accurately rate the level of intensity of this emotion (Clark et al., 2007; Kornreich et al., 2013; Maurage et al., 2009; Philippot et al., 1999). There has been no consistent finding on how alcoholics react to positive emotions but this is perhaps due to variation in measures and populations. For example, in a recent study by Kornreich et al. (2013), alcoholics were significantly impaired when it came to recognising happiness in voices, but accurately rated the level of intensity of a happy voice. In the same study, alcoholics’ accuracy scores for recognising happy faces and how much intensity they attributed to them did not differ significantly from the control group. In an earlier study by Philippot et al. (1999), detoxified alcoholics were compared with controls for accuracy of decoding and rating of levels of intensity of emotional faces at four levels of intensity, 0%, 30%, 70% and 100%. For happy faces they found alcoholics’ scores for accurately identifying this emotion was systematically worse than controls for all levels of intensity, but this was not significant. Similarly, alcoholics rated happy faces as more intense than controls but this was not significant. Thus the

emotion happiness produces unclear and contradictory results in emotional processing tasks in alcoholic samples.

The current experiment seeks to understand whether alcoholics confuse happy and neutral faces, although this is not expected given the findings in Experiment 4, and as per the predictions of Maurage et al (2009). There is no expectation that alcoholics would demonstrate a labelling error in the first part of this experiment. However in the second part of this experiment, both groups will be once more asked to quantify the level of emotion the facial stimuli contains and it is here that alcoholics – as per the findings of Experiment 4 – may show a difference, rating neutral faces as containing more emotion than non-alcoholics. Thus this study is important to validate the reliability of the findings of Experiment 4.

9.2 Method 9.2.1 Participants

The same participants that took part in Experiment 4, providing ratings of fearful and neutral faces also took part in this experiment one month after. See Section 7.2.1 for details of participants.

Importantly, however once more all the alcoholic participants were alcohol free at the time of testing as assessed by their key-worker using a breathalyser test. The breathalyser measures BAC and the reading had to be 0% for participants to take part in this experiment.

9.2.2 Apparatus and Stimuli

Stimuli were presented within questionnaires on plain white A4 paper. The facial stimuli used for the questionnaires for this experiment were those also used for Experiment 5. Thus, 12 male and 12 female grey-scaled faces with hair removed and presented against a black rectangular background (4” in width x 6” in height) were presented (see Figure: 8.1). Twelve of the faces

conveyed a happy expression and 12 a neutral expression. Participants were asked ‘How happy is this face?’, and asked to indicate their response on a 7- point Likert scale, 1 – indicated ‘not at all happy’, and 7 – ‘very happy’. This Likert scale was partially replicated from Clark et al. (2007).

All participants were asked to complete the four question FAST (NICE, 2002).

9.2.3 Design and Procedure

This experiment is a 2 x 2 mixed design, with Group being the between subject variable 2 with two levels (Alcoholic, Non Alcoholic) and Stimuli being a within subjects variable also with two levels (Happy and Neutral faces), the dependent measure was the participants ratings of the faces.

Trials were randomised with half of participants completing the FAST audit before completing the rating task and half after. Participants were instructed how to complete both sets of questionnaires. All of the facial stimuli were randomised. Participants were asked to view the faces one at a time and indicate on the 7-point likert scale how fearful the face was. Participants were asked to indicate by circling a number 1 through to 7. If participants did not perceive the face as fearful then they could select number 1, and numbers 2-7 worked on an intensity continuum with 7 being ‘very happy’.

9.3 Results

Ratings are summarised in Figure 9.1. Alcoholics and Non-Alcoholics showed a similar trend for rating. Overall, happy faces were rated as much happier than neutral faces. Ratings were analysed in a two-way mixed ANOVA with Stimulus Type (Happy, Neutral) as the within- participants factors and Group (Alcoholic, Non-Alcoholic) as the between-participant factor. There was a main effect for Stimulus Type F(1,58)=3425.61, p<.001, R2=.983, due to the happy faces being rated more happy than the neutral faces.

However given the similarity in ratings by both groups, no main effect for Group was observed, F(1,58)= 2.99 p=.089. Hence, there was also no interaction between Stimulus Type and Group, F(1,58)=1.07, p=.305.

Figure 9.1: Mean happy rating to neutral and happy stimuli (from a total of 7) for both alcoholics and non-alcoholics. Bars represent the 95% confidence interval

9.4 Discussion

9.4.1 Summary of the main findings

The aim of this experiment was to understand whether there are any processing differences of happy and neutral faces, as presented within Experiment 5, between alcoholics and non-alcoholics. Experiment 5 had shown that alcoholics and non-alcoholics both show an extra RT cost to happy over neutral faces. However, in Experiment 4, alcoholics rated neutral faces as containing more emotion than non-alcoholics. Therefore would this finding from experiment 4 be replicated? Would alcoholics show any differences in how they perceive happy faces?

The results show that neither the alcoholics nor the non-alcoholics rated the neutral faces as happy. Thus neither group processed these faces as containing happiness. Such findings as this are in line with those of Maurage et al. (2009) who state that an alcoholic’s deficits in emotional processing is not simply a labeling error. There was a similar rating trend shown by both groups and the alcoholics did not exhibit any great differences in their ratings compared to non-alcoholics. There was a ceiling effect for rating the happy faces as happy. Once again there were no significant differences in ratings between the groups and thus the alcoholics showed no impairment in the ratings of happy faces.

In order to further understand the nature of alcoholics’ reaction and perception of the neutral and happy stimuli used within this thesis the second part of this experiment employs the methods of Clark et al. (2007) as described in Chapter 7.