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Facial Emotion Recognition Deficit in Children with Moderate/Severe Obstructive Sleep Apnea

Fu-Jun Zhao1, Qing-Wei Chen2,3,4, Yunxiao Wu5

  • 1Department of Otolaryngology, Head and Neck Surgery, Beijing Children's Hospital, National Center for Children's Health, Capital Medical University, Beijing 100045, China.

Brain Sciences
|December 23, 2022
PubMed

Insights

Children with moderate/severe sleep-disordered breathing (SDB) show deficits in recognizing facial expressions, impacting social communication. This contrasts with milder SDB and healthy children, suggesting SDB severity is key.

Area of Science:

  • Pediatric Neurology
  • Sleep Medicine
  • Developmental Psychology

Background:

  • Facial expression classification deficits are documented in adults with sleep-disordered breathing (SDB).
  • Generalizability of these findings to pediatric populations remains unclear.
  • SDB in children encompasses primary snoring, mild obstructive sleep apnea (OSA), and moderate/severe OSA.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate facial expression recognition abilities in children with varying SDB severity.
  • To explore the relationship between SDB, psychosocial problems, and emotional processing in children.
  • To determine if SDB severity influences the ability to classify emotional expressions.

Main Methods:

  • Children with primary snoring (n=51), mild OSA (n=39), moderate/severe OSA (n=26), and healthy controls (n=20) participated.
  • Overnight polysomnography and the Emotional Expression Recognition Task were administered.
  • Parent-reported Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ) assessed psychosocial issues.

Main Results:

  • A positive classification advantage (PCA) for facial expressions was absent in the moderate/severe OSA group.
  • PCA was maintained in healthy controls, primary snoring, and mild OSA groups.
  • Accuracy in identifying sad expressions correlated negatively with conduct problems; emotional symptoms correlated with OAHI.

Conclusions:

  • Children with moderate/severe OSA exhibit impaired facial expression categorization.
  • This dysfunction may hinder social communication abilities in affected children.
  • SDB severity is a critical factor in facial emotion recognition deficits during childhood.

Keywords:
childrenemotional expression recognition taskobstructive sleep apneapositive classification advantageschematic facesleep-disordered breathing

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