Interpersonal problems, emotional facial expression recognition, and alcoholism.

Abstract

Interpersonal problems and emotional facial expression recognition (EFER) impairments have been vastly reported to be present in Alcoholics. Despite the international scientific interest in studying the relationship of these variables on this population, we found no measures of interpersonal problems adapted in Brazilian Portuguese. The first study of this work provides an adaptation of the circumplex scales of interpersonal problems (CSIP) to Brazilian Portuguese. Psychometric properties were analyzed for structural, construct and test-retest reliability. Data sampled for the structure (N = 904), construct (N = 622) and test retest (N = 58) strongly support the CSIP as an adequate instrument to assess interpersonal problems in the Brazilian context. The second study of this work assessed EFER skills and interpersonal problems of alcoholics across three stages of abstinence, non-abstinent (N = 7), short-term abstinent (N = 7) and long-term abstinent (N = 11) and controls (N = 8). Non abstinent presented more interpersonal problems than the other groups and there were no major group differences on the EFER between groups. Results suggests that alcoholics have no impairment on EFER and that interpersonal problems improve with abstinence