14 DAY TRIAL // A new research found that people with severe alcoholism could be more troubled when interpreting facial expressions linked to emotions.
This human ability is a crucial form of non-verbal communication and can have harmful effects on the social ability of the subject and how well s/he interacts with the others. "Alcoholics tend to have trouble decoding these expressions. These facial clues are key features of communication since they convey most information on emotional expression and regulation as well as on social motives," said study author Marie-Line Foisy, a researcher at the Universite Libre de Bruxelles.
To assess how alcoholics can "repair" deficits in interpreting facial expressions, Foisy's team selected 49 alcoholics from a long-stay post-detoxification treatment center after two or three weeks of detoxification.
Of these volunteers, 22 remained abstinent from alcohol two months later, while 27 gave up the treatment program. The team also employed a control group of 22 people, with the same age, gender and educational level to the study's participants. The subjects were presented an "emotional facial expression decoding test" of 16 images displaying "universal" facial expressions, like happiness, anger, disgust, and sadness, at the incipient moments of the research and two months later.
The team discovered that the decoding deficits were still present even after three months of abstinence; moreover, the 27 alcoholics abandoned the treatment program presented the worst decoding performance at baseline. "Our results corroborate and expand upon previous findings of more errors in accurate labeling, and overestimation of the intensity level of the emotion displayed, among alcoholic participants when compared to control participants," said Foisy.
"Trouble in accurately interpreting facial cues could help determine which alcoholics are more likely recover. Alcoholics with the most trouble understanding others' emotions may also have more difficulties in dealing with the conventional detoxification process. These subjects should benefit from training programs aimed at improving interpersonal skills", she said.