Interpretation of ambiguous facial affect in adults with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder

In addition to impairments in cognitive functioning, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is associated with deficits in interpersonal functioning as well which are assumed to stem from a distorted perception or interpretation of affective information. While previous research suggests that the decoding of negatively valenced facial stimuli is impaired, less is known about the potential interpretation biases in ADHD which are linked to other externalizing psychopathologies. The present study investigated interpretation biases in adults with ADHD (N = 65) and controls (N = 49) using ambiguous facial stimuli (angry/happy, angry/fearful, fearful/happy blends) with different proportions of each emotion. Participants indicated the dominant emotion and rated the perceived intensity of each image. While impaired processing of fearful expressions was evident in the ADHD group, the results of the current study do not provide support for an interpretation bias in adults with ADHD. These findings suggest that interpretation biases may be restricted to aggressive psychopathology and cannot be generalized to individuals with ADHD.