Emotional Recognition Training Enhances Attention to Emotional Stimuli Among Male Juvenile Delinquents

OBJECTIVE: Juvenile delinquents have deficits in emotional recognition that might play a critical role in the development of aggression. The present study aimed to investigate the effect of emotional recognition training and its consequences on emotional attention and aggression. METHODS: Seventy-three male juvenile delinquents were randomly assigned to two groups. One group was the modification group, which received eight days of training on an emotional recognition task. The purpose of the training was to modify interpretative biases in emotion recognition to encourage the perception of happiness over anger in ambiguous expressions. The other group was the waitlist group, which did not perform a task and continued with their usual programme. Before and after the training, participants completed the aggression questionnaire (AQ) and two behavioural tasks, including the emotional recognition task and a visual search task with happy and angry faces as targets. RESULTS: The modification group recognized more faces as happy after emotional recognition training than the waitlist group. Furthermore, the hostility in the modification group decreased significantly. Importantly, emotional recognition training further affected attention to emotional faces as participants responded faster in searching for happy and angry faces after training. CONCLUSION: Emotional recognition training could modify juvenile delinquents’ emotional recognition, enhance their visual attention to emotional faces and reduce hostility.