Emotion recognition from faces and investigation of its relationship with childhood traumas

The purpose of the study was to investigate the emotion recognition from faces in young adults and its linkwith childhood traumas by controlling the level of general psychological symptomatology and alexithymia through using FACES Turkish sample data set, which was used for the first time in the literature. The sample of the study was composed of 94 female (54,7%) and 78 male (45,3%) university students who were from different faculties at Hacettepe University and Middle East Technical University. In this study, "Childhood Trauma Questionnaire", "Brief Symptom Inventory", "20-item Toronto Alexithymia Scale", "FACES Turkish Sample Data Set" and Demographic Information Form were administeredto collect data. According to the examination of percentages of the recognition accuracy and the results of variance analyses which were conducted to answer the research questions, it was concluded that FACES Turkish Sample Data Set is a valid and useful tool for emotion recognition assessment from faces when the photos of middle-aged male and old female displaying anger are excluded from the data set.The results of hierarchical regression analyses indicated that childhood traumas significantly predict the recognition time of fear at positive direction when the level of general psychological symptomatology and alexithymia were controlled. In other words, it was found that young adults with childhood traumas looked longer to those faces to recognize the emotion of fear. Nevertheless, childhood traumas did not predict significantly the recognition accuracy and time of anger, disgust, sadness and happiness.