The relation between anger and different forms of disgust: Implications for emotion recognition impairments in Huntington's disease

Initial reports of emotion recognition in Huntington's disease (HD) found disproportionate impairments in recognising disgust. Not all subsequent studies have found this pattern, and a review of the literature to date shows that marked impairments in recognising anger are also often seen in HD. However, the majority of studies have based their conclusions on a single test of facial expression recognition. In the current study we revisit this issue of emotion recognition in HD to address whether the pattern found on one test of facial expression recognition generalised to another, and to different modalities using tests of emotion recognition from facial expressions, vocal expressions, and short verbal vignettes. The results showed evidence of impairments in recognising anger, fear and disgust across the three domains, with recognition of anger the most severely impaired. Given work identifying different subtypes of disgust that are associated with different facial features, a second study examined the recognition of three disgust expressions that healthy participants reliably associate with unpleasant tastes, unpleasant smells, and a more general elaborated or expanded form of disgust that includes reactions to violations of moral standards. The results showed a disproportionate impairment in recognising faces associated with the expanded form, the subtype most closely aligned with anger. We conclude that the related emotions of disgust and anger associated with social disapproval are frequently impaired in HD and discuss factors that might cause one emotion to show more severe impairments than the other. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.