Daily quote by Soldiers

• Previous studies have shown that exposure to traumatic events that put one’s life at risk may affect processing of facial expressions. Thus, for example, individuals suffering from PTSD have difficulties in differentiating between fearful and neutral faces (e.g., Felmingham, Bryant, & Gordon, 2003). Developmental studies have found that neglected or maltreated children demonstrate heightened sensitivity to anger and fearful expressions, while displaying difficulties in perceiving other expressions such as sadness and disgust (Masten et al., 2008; Pollak, Cicchetti, Hornung, & Reed, 2000; Pollak & Tolley-Schell, 2003). A recent study, which assessed the long-lasting impact of a terrorist attack, found that children who were held as hostages at the Russian town of Beslan on September 2004 by Chechen rebels were more accurate than nonexposed children in detecting threat related information such as anger in faces, which were morphed from two prototypical emotions (Scrimin, Moscardino, Capello, Altoe, & Axia, 2009; Scrimin, Moscardino, Capello, & Axia, 2008). In military veterans, however, the long-term consequences of life threatening experience on the perception of facial expressions have not been explored before, to the best of our knowledge.
  • David Anaki, Tamar Brezniak, Liron Shalom, “Faces in the face of Death: Effects of exposure to life-threatening events and mortality salience on facial expression recognition in combat and noncombat military Veterans”, Emotion, 12(4):860-7 (August 2012), p.860.