Facial Emotion Recognition in Anorexia Nervosa

Status

Completed

Phases

Unknown

Study type

Observational

Source

ClinicalTrials.gov

Registry ID

NCT06299293

Acronym

FER_AN

Enrollment

Registered

2024-03-07

Start date

2023-02-01

Completion date

2024-02-01

Last updated

2025-08-27

For informational purposes only — not medical advice. Sourced from public registries and may not reflect the latest updates. Terms

Conditions

Anorexia Nervosa

Keywords

Facial emotion recognition, Fear, Anger, Redundant target effect, Alexithymia

Brief summary

Altered emotional processing is reported in Anorexia Nervosa. However, this capability is generally measured through explicit measures, like self-report questionnaires and facial emotion recognition tasks. Instead, no previous research has investigated implicit emotional processing in this clinical condition. In the implicit facial emotion recognition task grounded on the implicit redundant target effect, individuals generally respond faster when two identical targets are presented simultaneously rather than when presented alone; moreover, the competitive presence of a distractor (that is another emotion or a neutral expression) affects the correct recognition of the target. The ability to recognize and detect facial expressions is explored about two main emotions, fear and anger, because of their role in the intra- and interindividual psychological processing.

Interventions

OTHERFacial Emotion Recognition Test

In this test, the ability to detect and recognize facial expressions of fear or anger will be investigated.

Study design

Observational model

CASE_CONTROL

Time perspective

CROSS_SECTIONAL

Eligibility

Sex/Gender

FEMALE

Age

20 Years to 50 Years

Healthy volunteers

Yes

Inclusion criteria

* right-handed * diagnosis of Anorexia Nervosa according to the APA criteria

Exclusion criteria

\- concurrent neurological, neurodevelopmental (e.g., autism), motor, somatosensory and/or psychiatric disorders.

Design outcomes

Primary

Measure	Time frame	Description
Behavioural measure relative to recognition ability	baseline	Level of accuracy expressed in percentage (min =%; max = 100%) about only the valid trails, in the case of emotion used as target.

Secondary

Measure	Time frame	Description
Behavioural measure relative to the detection ability	baseline	Reaction time (i.e., time of response from the onset of the visual stimulus) expressed in milliseconds relative to the valid response for the targeted emotion

Countries

Italy

Outcome results

None listed

Source: ClinicalTrials.gov · Data processed: Feb 4, 2026