The Impact of Familiarity and Emotional Attachment on the Visual Processing of Faces

Fecha de inicio: 1 de octubre de 1998

INCLUSION CRITERIA: Subjects will be recruited through advertisements within Bethesda and surrounding communities. All subjects must be right-handed. For experiments #1 and 2, subjects will be 20-40 years old. For study #3, subjects will be 45-75 years old. For experiment #2, all subjects will be mothers with a non-adopted child aged 6-12 years old. For experiment #3, subjects in the bereaved group will have become spousally bereaved within the past 6 months. EXCLUSION CRITERIA: Subjects will be excluded if they have a history of significant medical disorders (including learning disabilities, seizures, history of head trauma, hypertension, or cerebrovascular disease) or psychiatric disorders, including substance abuse. (An exception to this is that bereaved subjects in experiment #3 will not be excluded if they meet DSM-IV criteria for major depressive disorder (non-psychotic), adjustment disorder with depressed mood, or bereavement, as long as their current Hamilton-D score is less than 13). Subjects will also be excluded if they take any prescribed medications (including birth control pills), if they are pregnant, or if their vision is inadequate to see the visual stimulus. In addition, subjects in experiment #2 will receive a DICA-P (Diagnostic Interview for Children and Adolescents, Parent Version), and will be excluded if their child meets diagnostic criteria for a psychiatric illness.