2 - (SYM 11) Expressive Flexibility in Posttraumatic Stress Disorder

Emotion regulation flexibility is an emerging construct proposed to distinguish resilient and pathological trajectories after a traumatic event. This construct has been notably operationalised and measured in different ways. One under-investigated approach involves expressive flexibility, the ability to facially enhance or suppress emotional expression to modify emotional responses to a situation. Individuals with psychopathologies have exhibited deficits in expressive flexibility. In the case of PTSD and depression, deficits have been observed in emotional enhancement ability. Nevertheless, emotional expression is not unimodal. Therefore, this study aims to provide a comprehensive and holistic account of how expressive flexibility in PTSD impacts different channels of emotional expression. Trauma-exposed veterans who either met or did not meet criteria for PTSD (N=140) completed a modified version of the expressive flexibility task. Participants viewed blocks of positively and negatively valanced images. Prior to each block, participants were instructed to either enhance or suppress their expression of the emotions evident in the images or act as they ordinarily would. Participants were video and audio recorded whilst exposed to the images. These recorded responses were analysed using OpenWillis software to extract facial (e.g., facial expressivity), acoustic (e.g., pitch, volume, jitter), and linguistic (e.g., sentiment) features. Findings indicated distinct expressive markers of expressive flexibility between the PTSD and trauma-exposed control groups across distinct channels of emotional expression, including facial, acoustic and linguistic expression. By examining multiple channels, this study advances our current discourse on the nature and significance of emotion regulation flexibility in PTSD.