Emotion recognition of faces and emoji in individuals with moderate-severe traumatic brain injury

Facial emotion recognition deficits are common after moderate-severe traumatic brain injury (TBI) and linked to poor social outcomes. We examine whether emotion recognition deficits extend to facial expressions depicted by emoji.

Fifty-one individuals with moderate-severe TBI (25 female) and fifty-one neurotypical peers (26 female) viewed photos of human faces and emoji. Participants selected the best-fitting label from a set of basic emotions (anger, disgust, fear, sadness, neutral, surprise, happy) or social emotions (embarrassed, remorseful, anxious, neutral, flirting, confident, proud).

We analyzed the likelihood of correctly labeling an emotion by group (neurotypical, TBI), stimulus condition (basic faces, basic emoji, social emoji), sex (female, male), and their interactions. Participants with TBI did not significantly differ from neurotypical peers in overall emotion labeling accuracy. Both groups had poorer labeling accuracy for emoji compared to faces. Participants with TBI (but not neurotypical peers) had poorer accuracy for labeling social emotions depicted by emoji compared to basic emotions depicted by emoji. There were no effects of participant sex.

Because emotion representation is more ambiguous in emoji than human faces, studying emoji use and perception in TBI is an important consideration for understanding functional communication and social participation after brain injury.