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Updated: Feb 1, 2026

Exploring the Use of Isolated Expressions and Film Clips to Evaluate Emotion Recognition by People with Traumatic Brain Injury
Published on: May 15, 2016
Facial emotion recognition of older adults with traumatic brain injury
Lindsey Byom1,2, Melissa Duff3, Bilge Mutlu4
1a Division of Speech and Hearing Sciences, Department of Allied Health Sciences , University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Medicine , Chapel Hill , NC , USA.
Objectives:
The objective of this study was to examine the effects of traumatic brain injury (TBI) and age on facial emotion recognition abilities in adults. Age and TBI were expected to have negative effects on emotion recognition and a TBI by age interaction was hypothesized such that older adults with TBI would have the lowest emotion recognition scores.
Methods:
A prospective cohort study was conducted. Participants were 26 adults with moderate-severe TBI (13 older and 13 younger) and 26 uninjured peers matched for age, sex, and education. Emotion recognition was measured using the Emotion Recognition Task, which is comprised of dynamically morphed facial expressions of the six basic emotions, presented at different intensity levels.
Results:
TBI and older age were associated with poorer recognition of both subtle and intense expressions, but only for expressions of anger and sadness. There was no interaction of age and TBI.
Conclusions:
Results add to the growing evidence of emotion recognition impairments after TBI, particularly for select negative emotions, and extend this finding to adults over the age of 60. Further research is needed to better understand social cognitive effects of TBI across the adult lifespan.
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