From facial emotional recognition abilities to emotional attribution: A study in Down syndrome

Abstract

Facial expression processing and the attribution of facial emotions to a context were investigated in adults with Down syndrome (DS) in two experiments. Their performances were compared with those of a child control group matched for receptive vocabulary. The ability to process faces without emotional content was controlled for, and no differences appeared between the two groups. Specific impairments were found in the DS group according to the task modalities and the type of facial emotional expressions. In the emotion matching condition, the DS adults showed overall difficulties whereas in the identification and recognition conditions they were particularly impaired when processing the neutral expression. In the emotion attribution task, they exhibited difficulties with the sad expression only and the analysis of their error pattern revealed that they rarely selected this expression throughout the task. The sad emotion was the only one that showed a significant relationship with the facial expression processing tasks.

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

“…In addition, participants with WS obtained significantly higher results than participants with DS. These results are consistent with those previously found in the literature in this respect regarding both the performance of individuals with WS or DS compared to TD peers (Gagliardi et al, 2003;Kasari et al, 2001;Hippolyte et al, 2008;Hippolyte et al, 2009;Porter et al, 2007;Porter et al, 2010;Williams et al, 2005;Wishart et al, 2007;Wishart & Pitcairn, 2000) and the cross-syndrome comparison (Porter et al, 2007).…”

“…As in WS but to a lesser extent, skills for identity recognition are better than those for recognizing facial expressions in DS (Williams, Wishart, Pitcarin, & Willis, 2005;Wishart & Pitcarin, 2000). Across labeling, matching and identification tasks with static stimuli, individuals with DS consistently perform significantly lower than TD peers of the same MA (Kasari, Freeman, & Hughes, 2001;Hippolyte et al, 2009;Hippolyte, Barisnikov, Van der Linden, 2008;Porter et al, 2007;Williams et al, 2005;Wishart et al, 2007;Wishart & Pitcairn, 2000). However, these results seem to be observed only from a mental age of 4 years and above (Kasari et al, 2001).…”

“…Studies have also variously reported specific impairments in DS of fear (Kasari et al, 2001;Williams et al, 2005;Wishart & Pitcairn, 2000), surprise (Hippolyte et al, 2008;Hippolyte et al, 2009;Wishart & Pitcairn, 2000), anger (Kasari et al, 2001) and sadness (Porter et al, 2007). This variability may relate to the relatively small number of trials per emotion that are typical in these studies making solid conclusions difficult (Williams et al, 2005).…”

“…Impairments of facial expression recognition in individuals with DS have also been linked to their social behavior (Hippolyte, Barisnikov, Van der Linden, & Detraux, 2009;Wishart, 2007;Wishart, Cebula, Willis, & Pitcairn, 2007). As in WS but to a lesser extent, skills for identity recognition are better than those for recognizing facial expressions in DS (Williams, Wishart, Pitcarin, & Willis, 2005;Wishart & Pitcarin, 2000).…”

“…Individuals with DS seem to have greater difficulty recognizing negative emotions compared to a relative strength for happiness (Hippolyte et al, 2009). Studies have also variously reported specific impairments in DS of fear (Kasari et al, 2001;Williams et al, 2005;Wishart & Pitcairn, 2000), surprise (Hippolyte et al, 2008;Hippolyte et al, 2009;Wishart & Pitcairn, 2000), anger (Kasari et al, 2001) and sadness (Porter et al, 2007).…”