Day-to-Day Dynamics of Facial Emotion Expressions in Posttraumatic Stress Disorder

Details

• Personal Author:
  Feltman S ; Khudari C ; Kotov R ; Luft BJ ; Ringwald WR ; Samaras D ; Schwartz HA
• Description:
  Facial expressions are an essential component of emotions that may reveal mechanisms maintaining posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). However, most research on emotions in PTSD has relied on self-reports, which only capture subjective affect. The few studies on outward emotion expressions have been hampered by methodological limitations, including low ecological validity and failure to capture the dynamic nature of emotions and symptoms. Our study addresses these limitations with an approach that has not been applied to psychopathology: person-specific models of day-to-day facial emotion expression and PTSD symptom dynamics. We studied a sample of World Trade Center responders (N = 112) with elevated PTSD pathology who recorded a daily video diary and self-reported symptoms for 90 days (8953 videos altogether). Facial expressions were detected from video recordings with a facial emotion recognition model. In data-driven, idiographic network models, most participants (80 %) had at least one, reliable expression-symptom link. Six expression-symptom dynamics were significant for >10 % of the sample. Each of these dynamics had statistically meaningful heterogeneity, with some people's symptoms related to over-expressivity and others to under-expressivity. Our results provide the foundation for a more complete understanding of emotions in PTSD that not only includes subjective feelings but also outward emotion expressions. [Description provided by NIOSH]
• Subjects:
  Occupational Health Safety September 11 Terrorist Attacks
• Keywords:
  Affect Artificial Intelligence Author Keywords: Ecological Momentary Assessment Facial Expression Analysis Idiographic Network Model Post-traumatic Stress Disorder Psychological Responses PTSD World Trade Center WTC

  More +
• ISSN:
  0165-0327
• Document Type:
  Text
• Funding:
  Cooperative Agreement ; Contract
• Genre:
  Journal Article
• Place as Subject:
  Chicago Region [OSHA] ; Illinois ; Minnesota ; New York ; New York City Region [OSHA]
• CIO:
  National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH)
• Topic:
  Workplace Safety & Health
• Location:
  North America
• Pages in Document:
  331-339
• Volume:
  380
• NIOSHTIC Number:
  nn:20070769
• Citation:
  J Affect Disord 2025 Jul; 380:331-339
• Contact Point Address:
  Whitney R. Ringwald, Department of Psychology, University of Minnesota, United States of America
• Email:
  wringwal@umn.edu
• Federal Fiscal Year:
  2025
• Performing Organization:
  State University of New York, Stony Brook
• Peer Reviewed:
  True
• Start Date:
  20220701
• Source Full Name:
  Journal of Affective Disorders
• End Date:
  20260630
• Collection(s):
  National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health
• Main Document Checksum:
  urn:sha-512:84e594b9311d05330934b98b87d1fc3f785f6b9132317c87a036170b13235f25bee6ccc7e2fafa4375ebebea7127acd96cd6ae520dbf63e481aed6e9352ed04e
• Download URL:
  https://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/208927/cdc_208927_DS1.pdf
• File Type:
  [PDF - 3.93 MB ]