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Exploring the role of working memory and attention in emotion recognition among adults with ADHD, a dual-task study.

Emotion recognition is a complex nonlinear process, and there is debate regarding whether it is an automatic process, or whether it involves working memory (WM) or attentional resources. Evidence suggests that individuals with ADHD exhibit impairments in emotion recognition, though the driving forces behind these impairments are unclear. This project aimed to measure the role of attentional resources on emotion recognition in adults with ADHD by using a dual-task experiment involving a WM loading task and a dynamic face morphing paradigm. Participants were asked to identify the emotion expression shown in dynamic video morph sequences that changed rapidly from neutral to 80% intensity and back. This was performed in two conditions: alone and with a concurrent WM number recall task. Participant mood state and levels of anxiety and depressive symptoms were measured and controlled for using two self-report questionnaires (PANAS & Mini-MASQ). It was hypothesised that if emotion recognition requires attention, additional WM load would result in dual-task costs to emotion recognition performance in general, but especially for ADHD participants. No dual-task costs were found across groups in emotion recognition, though the results did reveal deficits in general WM performance for the ADHD group consistent with the wider literature. Taken altogether, the results emphasise the complexity of attentional/WM considerations and highlight the need for further research utilising similar dynamic paradigms.