Attention Deficits and Perception of Emotion in Groups

The present study investigated the relationship between attention deficits and the recognition of emotions of either individuals or groups (ensembles). Previous research has suggested that individuals with ADHD may have deficits in social cognition, specifically in recognizing the internal (emotional) states of others, though it remains unclear whether these deficits are a discrete component of ADHD or merely the byproduct of the inattention characteristic of the disorder. Perception of ensemble characteristics, or ensemble coding, has recently been the target of increased interest in perception research, and appears to represent a powerful mechanism for processing sensory information, particularly in situations when attentional resources are limited. Ensemble coding is an ideal avenue for investigating deficits in emotion recognition among those with ADHD because it may allow researchers to disentangle attentional deficits from specific deficits in social cognition. Fifty participants were evaluated for ADHD symptoms using the Barkley Adult ADHD Rating Scale (BAARS-IV), the University of California’s Greater Good Emotional Intelligence Quiz, and the Sensory Gating Inventory (SGI), and subsequently asked to perform an ensemble-coding task involving images of emotional faces. A correlation analysis was conducted using scores on the BAARS-IV and the SGI, as well as performance on the ensemble-coding task, to evaluate the relationship between ADHD symptoms and the ability to recognize emotion in others. Performance on the ensemble emotion recognition task did not differ as a function of severity of ADHD symptoms, suggesting that the emotion recognition deficits associated with ADHD are attentional in nature, rather than reflecting a deficit in downstream processing of higher order information related to emotion