Happy faces, sad faces: Emotion understanding in toddlers and preschoolers with language impairments.
Preschoolers with language impairment can see feelings but need help saying the words.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Rieffe et al. (2017) watched preschoolers look at happy, sad, angry, and scared faces. Some kids had language delays. Some talked on track.
Each child first pointed to the face that matched a feeling word. Next they said the feeling word out loud when the face appeared.
What they found
Both groups picked the right face equally well. Words were the problem. Kids with language delays could not name the feelings.
They stared at a sad face and said nothing, or guessed "happy." Their eyes worked; their feeling vocabulary did not.
How this fits with other research
Wang et al. (2011) saw the same split in deaf and hard-of-hearing preschoolers. Those kids could read faces yet could not say the emotion words.
Collin et al. (2013) reviewed 63 studies. They found face-reading gaps across ADHD, anxiety, and conduct disorders. The new twist here: the gap is only in naming, not in seeing.
Belmonte-Darraz et al. (2021) moved the test to children with cerebral palsy. Again, less emotion knowledge went hand-in-hand with more behavior problems. The pattern crosses diagnoses.
Why it matters
If a child can point to "angry" but cannot say "angry," teach the word, not the face. Add emotion cards to language drills. Model the label when the child shows the feeling. A quick script: "Your brow is down; that means you're mad. Say 'I'm mad.'" Five extra labels a week can close the gap before kindergarten.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
BACKGROUND: The capacity for emotion recognition and understanding is crucial for daily social functioning. We examined to what extent this capacity is impaired in young children with a Language Impairment (LI). In typical development, children learn to recognize emotions in faces and situations through social experiences and social learning. Children with LI have less access to these experiences and are therefore expected to fall behind their peers without LI. METHOD: In this study, 89 preschool children with LI and 202 children without LI (mean age 3 years and 10 months in both groups) were tested on three indices for facial emotion recognition (discrimination, identification, and attribution in emotion evoking situations). Parents reported on their children's emotion vocabulary and ability to talk about their own emotions. RESULTS: Preschoolers with and without LI performed similarly on the non-verbal task for emotion discrimination. Children with LI fell behind their peers without LI on both other tasks for emotion recognition that involved labelling the four basic emotions (happy, sad, angry, fear). The outcomes of these two tasks were also related to children's level of emotion language. IMPLICATIONS: These outcomes emphasize the importance of 'emotion talk' at the youngest age possible for children with LI.
Research in developmental disabilities, 2017 · doi:10.1016/j.ridd.2016.12.018