Suggestions for Studies of Substance Abusers' Responses to Nonverbal Facial Cues

Abstract

A study of drug abusers relating scores on measures of alexithymia and personality with affect recognition is reviewed. While the design is novel and provides useful data, multiple types of substance abusers were aggregated into one group. An averaging effect may have thus occurred rendering the results difficult to interpret. Duration of abstinence may have also provided a variable due to catecholamine rebound, which affects nonverbal encoding abilities.