Facial emotion recognition in Williams syndrome and Down syndrome: A matching and developmental study

Abstract

Citation for published item:wrt¡ %nezEgstillD F nd furtD wF nd forgttiD F nd qglirdiD gF @PHISA 9pil emotion reognition in illims syndrome nd hown syndrome X mthing nd developmentl studyF9D ghild neuropsyhologyFD PI @SAF ppF TTVETWPF Further information on publisher's website: Additional information:Use policyThe full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties in any format or medium, without prior permission or charge, for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-prot purposes provided that:• a full bibliographic reference is made to the original source • a link is made to the metadata record in DRO • the full-text is not changed in any way The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders.Please consult the full DRO policy for further details. In this study both the matching and developmental trajectories approaches were used to clarify the development of facial expression recognition in Williams syndrome (WS) and Down syndrome (DS). The matching approach showed that neither individuals with WS nor DS exhibit a specific proficiency for the expression of happiness or a specific impairments for negative emotions but presented the same pattern of emotion recognition as typically developing (TD) individuals. Thus, the better performance on the recognition of positive compared to negative emotions often reported in WS and DS is not specific to these populations but represents a typical pattern. Prior studies based on the matching approach suggested that the development of facial expression recognition is delayed in WS and atypical in DS. Nevertheless, and even though performance levels were lower in DS than in WS, the developmental trajectories approach used in this study found that not only individuals with DS but also those with WS present atypical developmental trajectories. Unlike in the TD participants where developmental changes were observed along with age, in the WS and DS development was static. Thus, both individuals with WS and those with DS reach early maximum levels of facial expression recognition due to cognitive constraints.

Emotion Recognition in Adolescents with Down Syndrome: A Nonverbal Approach

“…It also corroborates the study by Pochon and Declercq [24] of children with DS, which made use of static stimuli (photos). On the other hand, the results differ from those observed in earlier studies that used static stimuli, along with emotional vocabulary [9,10,14,15,25] or with dynamic stimuli and production of emotional vocabulary [27]. The original feature in this study was the design of a so-called “nonverbal” task, in the sense that language comprehension and production, particularly of emotional words, was not mobilized in any way for the recognition of emotions.…”

“…In addition, the administration of tasks that make use of dynamic stimuli—which are more ecological—appears to be more appropriate for assessing participants with DS than traditional tasks with static stimuli; that is true of this study and the one by Channell et al [23], which did not find evidence at that time of the deficits mentioned [9,10,17,18,25]. Nevertheless, Martínez-Castilla et al [27], despite their use of animated faces (morphing), found that participants with DS had more problems than TD participants and those with WS, but as they point out, the task was a labeling task, which requires productive verbal skills. Thus, the participants with DS could have been at a disadvantage.…”

“…Their results showed no deficit in emotion recognition of children with DS compared with TD children of the same level on the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT-4) [26]. Conversely, in the study by Martínez-Castilla et al [27], participants with DS obtained worse results on the Animated Full Facial Expression Comprehension Test [28] than TD participants and participants with Williams syndrome (WS) with the same DA (Stanford–Binet test, [29]). The stimuli used were animations created by morphing photographs of expressive faces taken from Ekman and Friesen’s [30] set.…”

Learning from facial expressions in individuals with Williams syndrome

“…Initial evidence has suggested that accuracy is higher for the emotion happy than for negative emotions, such as anger or fear (Plesa-Skwerer et al 2006;Porter et al 2007), although this may not be the case when methodological problems are overcome (Martínez-Castilla et al 2015). Nevertheless, autonomic arousal levels in response to negative emotions, such as sad or angry, have been found to be lower in individuals with WS than in comparison groups matched for age or for IQ, suggesting decreased vigilance (Plesa-Skwerer et al 2009), although one recent study indicated a comparable level of autonomic reactivity among children with WS and typically developing (TD) children of a similar age (Järvinen et al 2015).…”

“…), although this may not be the case when methodological problems are overcome (Martínez‐Castilla et al . ). Nevertheless, autonomic arousal levels in response to negative emotions, such as sad or angry, have been found to be lower in individuals with WS than in comparison groups matched for age or for IQ, suggesting decreased vigilance (Plesa‐Skwerer et al .…”