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Emotion Recognition in Preterm and Full-Term School-Age Children
Letizia Della Longa1, Chiara Nosarti2, Teresa Farroni1
1Developmental Psychology and Socialization Department, University of Padova, 35131 Padova, Italy.
Insights
Children born preterm have difficulties recognizing positive emotions. This impacts their social skills and behavior, highlighting the importance of early emotional signal detection for development.
Area of Science:
- Developmental Psychology
- Neuroscience
- Child Psychiatry
Background:
- Children born preterm (<37 weeks’ gestation) exhibit heightened vulnerability to socio-emotional challenges.
- Difficulties in socio-emotional development can increase the risk of behavioral and psychiatric issues later in life.
- Accurate decoding of facial emotional signals is crucial for early social interaction and understanding others' intentions.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate differences in emotion recognition between preterm and full-term children.
- To explore the relationship between emotion recognition abilities and socio-emotional skills in children.
- To examine the link between emotion recognition and problem behaviors in everyday activities.
Main Methods:
- Assessed 55 school-age children (34 preterm, 21 full-term) using a cognitive battery for comparable abilities.
- Administered an Emotion Recognition Task involving identifying emotional expressions from peers' faces.
- Utilized parent-reported questionnaires to assess children's emotional, social, and behavioral outcomes.
Main Results:
- Preterm children demonstrated lower accuracy in detecting positive emotional expressions compared to full-term children.
- Preterm children exhibited poorer social and behavioral outcomes.
- Correlational analyses revealed a significant association between emotion recognition ability and socio-emotional functioning.
Conclusions:
- Early difficulties in decoding facial emotional signals are critically linked to emotional and behavioral regulation problems in preterm children.
- Impaired emotion recognition in preterm children has significant implications for social skill development and interpersonal interactions.
- Interventions targeting emotion recognition may be beneficial for improving socio-emotional outcomes in children born preterm.
Abstract:
Children born preterm (<37 weeks’ gestation) show a specific vulnerability for socio-emotional difficulties, which may lead to an increased likelihood of developing behavioral and psychiatric problems in adolescence and adulthood. The accurate decoding of emotional signals from faces represents a fundamental prerequisite for early social interactions, allowing children to derive information about others’ feelings and intentions. The present study aims to explore possible differences between preterm and full-term children in the ability to detect emotional expressions, as well as possible relationships between this ability and socio-emotional skills and problem behaviors during everyday activities. We assessed 55 school-age children (n = 34 preterm and n = 21 full-term) with a cognitive battery that ensured comparable cognitive abilities between the two groups. Moreover, children were asked to identify emotional expressions from pictures of peers’ faces (Emotion Recognition Task). Finally, children’s emotional, social and behavioral outcomes were assessed with parent-reported questionnaires. The results revealed that preterm children were less accurate than full-term children in detecting positive emotional expressions and they showed poorer social and behavioral outcomes. Notably, correlational analyses showed a relationship between the ability to recognize emotional expressions and socio-emotional functioning. The present study highlights that early difficulties in decoding emotional signals from faces may be critically linked to emotional and behavioral regulation problems, with important implications for the development of social skills and effective interpersonal interactions.
