Emotion Recognition in Children With Down Syndrome: Influence of Emotion Label and Expression Intensity

Area of Science:

• Developmental Psychology
• Cognitive Neuroscience
• Genetics

Background:

• Children with Down syndrome (DS) often exhibit difficulties with social cognition, including facial emotion recognition.
• Specific deficits in recognizing fear in children with DS are noted, but underlying mechanisms and effective interventions remain unclear.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate emotion recognition abilities in children with DS compared to non-specific intellectual disability and typically developing (TD) children.
• To examine the impact of exaggerated emotional expressions and emotion labeling on recognition accuracy and speed.

Main Methods:

• A photo-matching task was employed with three groups of children (N=21 each): DS, non-specific intellectual disability, and TD.
• Participants completed the task under four conditions: veridical vs. exaggerated emotions, and emotion-labeling vs. generic instructions.

Main Results:

• Exaggerating emotions significantly improved recognition accuracy and speed across all participant groups.
• Emotion labeling enhanced recognition accuracy in all groups.
• Children with DS showed poorer recognition of fear compared to TD children, irrespective of emotion labeling.

Conclusions:

• Facial emotion recognition, particularly for fear, is impaired in children with Down syndrome.
• Interventions utilizing exaggerated emotional expressions show promise for improving emotion recognition skills in children with DS.