reappraisal is a cognitive strategy involving reinterpretation of a potentially emotion-eliciting situation into a situation with a different emotional impact [26]. Expressive suppression is a way of response modulation involving inhibition of emotion-expressive behavior [27]. Examples of this questionnaire are ‘‘I control my emotions by changing the way I think about the situation I’m in’’ (reappraisal), ‘‘I control my emotions by not expressing them’’ (suppression). The scale consists of 10 items (6 reappraisal items, 4 suppression items). Lower reappraisal and higher suppression scores indicate more problems with emotion regulation. Berkeley Expressivity Questionnaire. Emotional expressivity was measured with the Berkeley Expressivity Questionnaire (BEQ) . This questionnaire assesses three facets of emotional expressivity: negative expressivity (NE) (6 items), positive expressivity (PE) (4 items), and impulse strength (IS) (6 items). The questionnaire measures the degree to which both positive and negative emotions are expressed behaviorally and also the general strength of the emotional impulses. Examples of items are ‘‘It is difficult for me to hide my fear’’ (NE), ‘‘When I’m happy, my feelings show’’ (PE), ‘‘My body reacts very strongly to emotional situations’’ (IS) [28]. Items can be rated on a scale ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 7 (strongly agree). Higher scores indicate higher degrees to which emotion response tendencies are expressed as manifest behavior and a higher general strength of these tendencies. Positive and Negative Affect Schedule. Positive and negative affect were measured with the Positive Affect Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS). The PANAS measures the current affective state. Positive affect (PA) reflects the extent to which a person feels enthusiastic, active and alert (examples: ‘‘interested’’ and ‘‘excited’’). Negative Affect (NA) is a general dimension of distress, two items of this subscale are ‘‘nervous’’ and ‘‘upset’’ [29]. This scale consists of 10 positive affect items and 10 negative affect items. Higher scores indicate stronger affect (either positive or negative). Empathy Quotient. Empathy was measured with the Empathy Quotient (EQ) [30]. This questionnaire measures the ability to what extent one is able to tune into how someone else is feeling, or what someone else might be thinking. An example of an item is ‘‘I am good at predicting how someone will feel.’’ This scale comprises 60 items, including 20 filler items. A high score means a high degree of empathy. Tasks Micro Expression Training Tool. In the Micro Expression Training Tool (METT) [31] participants had to learn to recognize micro expressions in faces. Micro-expressions are very brief (15 ms) facial expressions, beginning and ending with a neutral expression. In this task seven different emotions were shown: sadness, anger, surprise, fear, disgust, contempt and happiness. The participant was first trained and then allowed to practice to learn to recognize micro-expressions of emotions. The training consisted of four pairs of faces expressing commonly confused emotions (anger/disgust, contempt/happy, fear/surprise, fear/ sadness). Each trial started with two neutral faces, which simultaneously transformed in slow motion (4 s) into two commonly confused emotions. In each trial, the faces transformed four times from neutral to the emotional expressions and back to neutral, ending in an emotional expression. The spoken information about the expressions from the Ekman software [31] was not presented. In the practice session (42 trials), a micro-expression was presented and the participant had to select the corresponding emotion out of seven emotions. Feedback was given after each response. Finally, a test of micro- Alexithymia and Emotion expression recognition was performed consisting of 14 trials (two trials per emotion), similar to the practice session but without feedback. Accuracy scores of the recognition test were used for statistical analysis. Due to technical problems, data were not available for one subject. Associative Learning Task. Two associative learning tasks were administered (using E-prime software [32]). The tasks were based on the tasks described by Exner et al. [33]. Both tasks consisted of six pictures of basic facial emotional expressions from the Ekman and Friesen series [34] and six words. One of the tasks concerned identity and the other emotion. In the identity learning trials, six words (hat, scissors, carpet, basket, table, stone) paired with neutral expressions from different people (three male and three female faces) were shown for a maximum of 30 seconds each. Participants were instructed to memorize each pair. In the recall trial, that immediately followed the learning trial, participants had to match the correct face out of the six faces to each word subsequently. This sequence was presented six times in random order amounting to 36 trials. After the participant recalled all six pairs correctly or after six learning and recall trials, the task was terminated. The emotional learning task was the same as the identity learning task except for the pictures of the faces and the words (car, newspaper, paper, bag, football, and chair). In this task, the face showed the six basic emotional expressions (anger, fear, disgust, sadness, happiness and surprise) of one woman. In the recall trial, the participant had to match the correct emotional expression to each word. The number of correct pairs was used for statistical analysis. Affective Prosody Task. Participants were asked to identify the emotion expressed through the prosody or semantics of a spoken sentence. This task consisted of sentences with an emotional content (happy, sad, angry, anxious) pronounced with an incongruent emotional tone of voice (happy, sad, angry, anxious). The sentences were pronounced by two professional actors, a male and a female voice, to control for individual and/or gender differences in affective prosody [35]. The sentences were of approximately equal length and were presented via two speakers by a computer at a rate of one sentence per 20 seconds. During listening, the emotion labels from which the participant could choose (fear, anger, happiness and sadness) were presented on the computer screen. In the prosody condition, participants had to attend to the affective tone of voice and ignore the incongruent affective semantic content. In the semantics condition, participants had to attend to the affective semantic content and ignore the affective tone of voice. Participants were instructed to make a response as soon as they identified the emotion expressed in the sentence, either based on content or tone of voice (‘prosody’) [35]. Accuracy and reaction times were used for statistical analysis. Due to a lack of correct responses in one condition, four participants were not included in this analysis. Conflicting Beliefs and Emotions. We employed a Dutch translation of the task designed by Shaw and colleagues [36] to measure cognitive and emotional aspects of ‘theory of mind’. It consisted of eight vignettes, each concerning a short story involving a social situation of either exclusion or threat. Each story features two actors, A and B; A holds a true first order belief and B holds a false second order belief. Each belief is associated with an emotional state, one with positive and the other with negative valence. Each story was followed by six questions aimed at testing participants’ understanding of the conflicting beliefs and the associated emotional states. Two first-order and two second- order questions were included. The first-order questions tested participants’ ability to deduce from the story the belief and emotional state of actor A. The second order questions tested PLoS ONE | www.plosone.org 3 June 2009 | Volume 4 | Issue 6 | e5751