Did diazepam slow recognition across the facial expressions studied?

Someone can take longer to recognize an expression while still identifying it correctly. Pringle and colleagues separated speed and accuracy when testing how repeated diazepam administration affected emotional processing in healthy volunteers.

What the experiment measured

The placebo-controlled study enrolled 36 healthy participants and examined the effects of seven or eight days of treatment. The researchers reported that diazepam slowed responses across the tested facial expressions. They did not find an effect on accuracy in the facial-expression task. The same study used separate tasks for attention to threatening images and for memory of emotional words.

What the distinction means outside the lab

The experiment timed responses to standardized images. A slower response on that task provides limited information about whether a particular person understood a social encounter or remembered it afterward. When evaluating an opinion based on this study, ask whether the claim concerns response speed, accuracy or later recall, and which task the authors used to measure it.

Source

Pringle et al., Psychopharmacology (2016), full text · DOI