Facial-affect recognition in normal preschool children and in senile elderly persons

The performance of senile elderly persons and of young children was compared on an identical facial affect recognition test. The senile persons were disoriented with impaired recent memory. However, their neurological functioning in visual, perceptual, verbal, and motor processing required for the testing was intact. The children were divided into age groups of 3, 3 1/2, 4, 4 1/2, and 5. Pictures of happy, sad, and angry faces were shown and the subjects were tested for their ability to discriminate between the emotions by the use of prompting and oddity procedures. The very young children (ages 3 and 3 1/2) were found to be at a deficit in recognizing facial expressions, particularly with regard to the recognition of sad faces. The children's recognition level improved as a function of age. The senile persons were found to be significantly more impaired than even the youngest group of children, particularly with regard to the recognition of angry faces. While the children attempted to distinguish between the stimuli on the basis of affect, the seniles tended to "feature-detect", because their facial feature recognition ability remained relatively intact. Thus the impairment of facial affect recognition in senility was quite unlike that of younger children. The extensive deterioration of senile patients in facial affect recognition ability is remarkable and has important therapeutic implications. Since these patients still maintain high level of verbal comprehension, clear verbal expression of our feelings toward them is essential.