ArticleBrain and behavior2019
Emotion sensitivity and self-reported symptoms of generalized anxiety disorder across the lifespan: A population-based sample approach.
Article in Brain and behavior, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 17 papers.
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Who cites it
17 citing papers in PubMed, 32 citations in OpenAlex.
- Visual attention toward emotional stimuli: Anxiety symptoms correspond to distinct gaze patterns.PloS one · 2021Trial
- Neuroticism, extraversion, and emotion sensitivity in a nonclinical young adult sample.PloS one · 2026Article
- Emotion identification and emotion sensitivity following interpersonal and non-interpersonal traumatic experiences: Results from the AURORA study.Clinical psychological science : a journal of the Association for Psychological Science · 2025Article
- Anxiety and Depression are Associated with More Distorted Thinking on Social Media: A Longitudinal Multi-Method Study.Cognitive therapy and research · 2025Article
- Sex differences in the effects of trait anxiety and age on resting-state functional connectivities of the amygdala.Journal of affective disorders reports · 2023Article
- Morphological similarity of amygdala-ventral prefrontal pathways represents trait anxiety in younger and older adults.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2022Article
- Posttraumatic stress symptom severity is associated with impaired processing of emotional faces in a large international sample.Journal of traumatic stress · 2022Article
- Neurocognition after motor vehicle collision and adverse post-traumatic neuropsychiatric sequelae within 8 weeks: Initial findings from the AURORA study.Journal of affective disorders · 2022Article
- Guts Imbalance Imbalances the Brain: A Review of Gut Microbiota Association With Neurological and Psychiatric Disorders.Frontiers in medicine · 2022Review
- Article
- Emotional processes in binge drinking: A systematic review and perspective.Clinical psychology review · 2021Review
- Article
- The Effects of a Reading-Based Intervention on Emotion Processing in Children Who Have Suffered Early Adversity and War Related Trauma.Frontiers in psychology · 2021Article
- Depression severity is associated with impaired facial emotion processing in a large international sample.Journal of affective disorders · 2020Article
- Progressive brain structural alterations assessed via causal analysis in patients with generalized anxiety disorder.Neuropsychopharmacology : official publication of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology · 2020Article
- Targeting separate specific learning parameters underlying cognitive behavioral therapy can improve perceptual judgments of anger.Journal of behavior therapy and experimental psychiatry · 2019Article
- Emotion sensitivity and self-reported symptoms of generalized anxiety disorder across the lifespan: A population-based sample approach.Brain and behavior · 2019Article
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Authors and funding
6 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundIndividuals with generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) symptoms show deficits in emotion processing, but results of prior studies have been conflicting, and little is known about developmental trajectories of emotion processing over time. We examined the association between GAD symptoms and sensitivity to recognizing emotional facial expressions (emotion sensitivity: ES) for three emotions (happiness, anger, fear) in a large, diverse, population-based sample. We hypothesized that higher anxiety scores would be associated with poorer performance, and expected that ES performance and anxiety scores would decline across the lifespan.
methodParticipants were 7,176 responders to a web-based ES study (age range = 10-96 years old).
resultsHigher GAD-7 scores were associated with poorer ES performance for all emotion categories (happiness, anger, fear). The relationship between GAD-7 and ES scores remained significant after controlling for the effects of age and sex, and there was no significant interaction, indicating that the relationship does not change across age. Age significantly predicted ES and GAD-7 scores across emotions, with older ages showing lower ES scores and lower anxiety.
conclusionsIn the largest study of its kind, GAD symptoms were associated with impaired ES performance across three emotion types. Future research should explore the connection between anxiety symptoms, cognitive processing, and social processing to better characterize the mechanisms of how GAD is linked with both social and non-social information processing. Future work may also look at if ES is related over time to changes in anxiety, making it a promising target for intervention.
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.