Emotion recognition deficits and biases are a ubiquitous feature of mental health problems, including anxiety and depression, conduct disorder, psychosis, autism-spectrum disorder, and addiction. However, it remains unclear what the direction of causality is between these deficits and biases, and these mental health problems.

Given the rich lifecourse data and detailed psychiatric information available within ALSPAC, as well as existing measures of emotion recognition in childhood (DANVA), the collection of emotion recognition data in early adulthood in ALSPAC would enable these relationships to be comprehensively investigated.

We have developed a computer-based six-alternative forced choice task that is highly-sensitive to individual differences in emotion recognition. The Emotion Recognition Task is available commercially through Cambridge Cognition, as part of the Cantab Research Suite. It is used in the Cantab Schizophrenia battery and the Cantab Depression battery.

http://www.cambridgecognition.com/tests/emotion-recognition-task-ert

Other variants of the task, such as a two-alternative forced choice Task (which uses ambiguous stimuli tanging from one exemplar emotion to another, rather than from a an ambiguous-neutral expression exemplar emotions), are not currently available through Cambridge Cognition. We retain the right to use the task for research purposes, and have developed an online version for remote delivery.

We therefore propose to collect data on emotion recognition, using the online Emotion Recognition Task, in the ALSPAC cohort. We envisage that this would be completed in parallel with a future questionnaire sweep (possibly December 2015). The task itself takes approximately 15 minutes to complete.