Reading emotion cues: social communication difficulties in pediatric populations

Speech-language pathologists frequently address social communication difficulties in children with diverse linguistic profiles. Of consequence to effective management of social communication skills is that some children with language disorders may also have difficulty understanding emotional cues. The ability to recognize and comprehend the emotional meaning of messages is accomplished through integration of linguistic cues (e.g., what the speaker says), nonlinguistic cues (e.g., the speaker's facial expressions), and situational cues (e.g., predicting how the speaker is likely to feel about the particular topic). This article explores children's comprehension of emotion as expressed through facial expressions and situational cues. First, development of emotion comprehension in children with normal development is summarized. This is followed by a brief review of studies investigating emotion comprehension in clinical populations. Suggestions for assessment and intervention of children's emotion comprehension skills are presented.