Facial emotion recognition in child psychiatry: a systematic review.

Collin et al. (2013) looked at every paper they could find on kids reading faces. They pulled 63 studies that tested children with ADHD, anxiety, mood, or behavior disorders. The team asked one question: do these kids spot happy, sad, mad, and scared faces as well as typical peers?

No new kids were tested. The authors simply counted up what earlier work already showed.

Across all 63 papers, youth with any psychiatric label scored lower on face-reading tasks. The gap was not tiny. These deficits lined up with real-life social problems like fewer friends and more fights.

The review folds in many single-disease studies you already know. Kuusikko et al. (2009) showed ASD teens miss blended emotions. Bal et al. (2010) added that ASD kids read anger slower and with higher heart rate. Lisa’s big picture says these single-study deficits hold steady across disorders.

Pandey et al. (2025) seems to clash at first. Their 2025 scoping review says ASD emotion skill is “mixed,” not always low. The gap closes once you see the methods: Rishabh counted how often papers reported ANY result, while Lisa only tracked studies with clear deficit scores. The two reviews answer different questions, so both can be true.

Olsson et al. (2001) gives hope inside the gloom. Slow-motion faces wiped out the ASD deficit in preschoolers. Lisa’s review did not highlight this fix, so a BCBA reading only the 2013 paper might miss an easy teaching tweak.

You now have a one-stop map: almost every clinical kid you serve is likely weaker at reading faces. Screen for it, then borrow tricks that work. Use dynamic or slow-motion faces, teach feeling words early, and watch for anger-blind spots. A five-minute probe during intake can flag kids who need social-skills blocks before problems snowball.