Facial- and postural-affect recognition in the mentally handicapped and normal young children

Facial- and postural-effect recognition was assessed in two groups of normal children (average ages of 5 yr., 3 mo. 5 yrs., 9 mo.) and three groups of retarded subjects (mild, moderate and severe). All subjects were tested under five separate conditions, in an attempt to determine if there was an impairment in affect recognition which varied directly as a function of the degree of mental handicap. In the first condition, subjects were presented with a smiling, pouting and a frowning face on each of 18 trials. They were given one prompt per trial, being instructed to point to the happy, sad or angry stimulus. Expressive postural stimuli devoid of facial features were used in Condition 2, and the same prompting procedure was followed. In the remaining three conditions facial and postural expressions were combined in different ways, so that they either agreed or disagreed. The resulting error data were evaluated by use of an analysis of variance. The principal findings showed that the severely retarded performed very poorly in all conditions. The remaining groups performed relatively well and failed to differ significantly from one another in facial-affect recognition. However, the moderately retarded group was significantly more impaired in postural-affect recognition than were the mildly handicapped and normals.