Emotion recognition as a function of social competence and depressed mood in individuals with intellectual disability.
Adults with ID who feel better and act more socially also read faces more accurately.
01Research in Context
What this study did
The team asked adults with intellectual disability to match photos of faces showing happy, sad, angry, and scared looks. They also rated each person's social skills and mood.
Better social players and people who were not depressed scored higher on the emotion-matching game.
What they found
Socially skilled and non-depressed adults with ID picked the right emotion picture more often. Mood and social skill mattered more than IQ alone.
How this fits with other research
Ohan et al. (2015) pooled many studies and showed that, on average, adults with ID still read faces worse than typical peers. The 1997 paper does not disagree—it simply shows that within the ID group, happier and more social members do best.
Leung et al. (1998) ran the same task in China and found the same deficit, proving the problem is not culture-bound.
Repp et al. (1992) had already shown the basic deficit; the 1997 study adds that social competence and mood can move scores up or down inside that deficit.
Why it matters
When social-skills training stalls, check two things: depression and social aptitude. A quick mood screen and some rapport-building may boost how well clients read faces. Try starting sessions only when the client is calm and engaged, and weave in friendly peer practice to lift both mood and skill.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
The present study was designed to test whether social competence and mood were predictive of the performance by adults with mild or moderate intellectual disability on a matching-to-sample task using facially expressed emotions as stimuli. Thirty-eight subjects were assigned to either a depressed mood group or a non-depressed mood group based on their scores on the two depression sub-scales of the Reiss Screen for Maladaptive Behavior. The groups were matched on sex, age and level of intellectual disability. Each group consisted of 10 women and nine men; 12 participants in each group had mild and seven had moderate intellectual disability, respectively. Social competence was assessed with the Social Performance Survey Schedule (SPSS). Performance on the matching-to-sample task correlated positively with the subjects' level of intellectual disability, their mood scores and the scores on the Appropriate Skills sub-scale of the SPSS. The implications of these findings for social skills training programmes and limitations of this study are discussed.
Journal of intellectual disability research : JIDR, 1997 · doi:10.1111/j.1365-2788.1997.tb00738.x