Social Adjustment, Academic Adjustment, and the Ability to Identify Emotion in Facial Expressions of 7-Year-Old Children

Abstract

The authors aimed to examine the possible association between (a) accurately reading emotion in facial expressions and (b) social and academic competence among elementary school-aged children. Participants were 840 7-year-old children who completed a test of the ability to read emotion in facial expressions. Teachers rated children's social and academic behavior using behavioral rating scales. The authors found that children who had more difficulty identifying emotion in faces also were more likely to have more problems overall and, more specifically, with peer relationships among boys and with learning difficulties among girls. Findings suggest that nonverbal receptive skill plays a significant role in children's social and academic adjustment.

Emotional prosodic change detection in autism Spectrum disorder: an electrophysiological investigation in children and adults

“…Emotional voices are prosodic stimuli that contain great amounts of social information. Their interpretation has even been associated with social competence during childhood and adolescence [ 23 ]. Atypical prosodic production is a hallmark of autism and was linked to social awkwardness [ 24 ] and to poor communication and socialization skills of children with ASD [ 25 ].…”

Brain mechanisms involved in angry prosody change detection in school-age children and adults, revealed by electrophysiology

“…The interpretation of emotional prosody is a valuable skill that needs to be mastered quickly in order to handle communication in social contexts. Indeed, sensitivity to others' vocal emotional expressions is associated with social competence in both childhood and adolescence (Goodfellow & Nowicki, 2009).…”

Emotion Perception Accuracy and Bias in Face-to-Face Versus Cyberbullying

“…Because emotion perception is a basic component of human nonverbal communication and it has been shown to play a fundamental role in social interaction and adaptation, it was expected to play some part in the bullying process (Goodfellow & Nowicki, 2009;Surcinelli, Codispoti, Montebarocci, Rossi, & Baldaro, 2006). As far as we know, the present study is one of the first attempts to investigate the possible association between the face-to-face and cyber forms of bullying/victimization behaviors with nonverbal emotion perception ability (i.e., recognizing facial expressions of happiness, sadness, anger and fear) over and above other forms of bullying or victimization.…”

“…When children are relatively accurate in their perception of others' emotions it is reasonable to assume that their interactions will reinforce their interpretation of the social situations, and casual errors in recognition are likely to be corrected during social transactions. A growing body of research on emotion knowledge has contributed to support the assumption that accurate perception of emotion expression is positively related to social and academic competence and fewer numbers of internalizing behaviors (Fine, Izard, Mostow, Trentacosta, & Ackerman, 2003;Goodfellow & Nowicki, 2009;Izard et al, 2001;Mostow, Izard, Fine, & Trentacosta, 2002;Nowicki & Duke, 1994). The relation between emotion perception accuracy and externalizing behaviors is less clear.…”