Investigating basic emotion knowledge of people with Williams syndrome.
Kids with Williams syndrome fall below mental-age peers when naming emotions from everyday stories.
01Research in Context
What this study did
The team asked children with Williams syndrome to pick the right emotion after hearing short stories. They compared scores to two groups: kids matched for mental age and kids matched for birth age.
The study used a case-control design. No teaching happened; they only measured what the children already knew.
What they found
Children with Williams syndrome scored lower than both comparison groups. Even when mental age was the same, the WS group still lagged behind in naming basic emotions like happy, sad, and angry.
How this fits with other research
Ikeda et al. (2023) extends this work. They tracked the same skill over time and added an autism group. Both papers show WS emotion knowledge is delayed, but the 2023 study shows the gap widens for trickier feelings like moral emotions.
Lacroix et al. (2009) seems to disagree. They found WS kids did worse than autism peers on face-based emotion tasks. The new paper shows WS kids also lag behind mental-age peers using story tasks. The two studies used different cues—faces versus stories—so both can be true.
Serrano-Juárez et al. (2021) adds a genetic twist. They showed WS kids who kept the GTF2I genes scored higher on social tasks. Together these papers tell us: emotion delays are real in WS, but genes and task type shape how big the delay looks.
Why it matters
If you work with a child who has Williams syndrome, do not assume friendly talk equals strong emotion knowledge. Check basic emotion comprehension before starting social-skills training. Use simple stories or pictures first, then move to faces. Match teaching steps to the child’s mental age, not their friendly chatter.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
BACKGROUND: Emotional recognition is a key aspect of mentalizing other people's minds. People with Williams syndrome (WS) are reported to be hypersocial and empathetic; however, few studies have investigated their emotion processing ability. AIMS: This study aimed to examine emotion knowledge in people with WS and to further understand their emotion-related mentalizing ability. METHODS AND PROCEDURES: Six basic emotions (happiness, sadness, anger, fear, disgust, and surprise) were tested by narrating scenarios targeting specific emotions. Participants with WS (n = 16, 8F/8 M, CA = 8.46, MA = 5.27) listened to each scenario and pointed to an emoticon displayed on a card. Correct percentages of each target emotion and replacement by other emotions were analyzed. Comparison groups comprised mental age-matched controls (n = 16, 8F/8 M, CA = 5.26) and chronological age-matched controls (n = 16, 8 F/8 M, CA = 8.31), sixth graders (n = 20, 10F/10M, CA = 12.04), and college students (n = 20, 10F/10M, CA = 20.03). All were Chinese-speaking participants with right handedness. OUTCOMES AND RESULTS: People with WS were delayed compared to the mental age-matched group but differed from the chronological age-matched group in emotion processing. The 6th graders showed different patterns from college students, suggesting that development of emotion processing takes time. CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS: These findings suggest (1) a gap in the maturation of emotion knowledge between people with WS and typically developing controls, (2) a nonequivalent chronological emotion-related mentalizing ability in people with WS, and (3) developmental changes in emotion processing from childhood to adulthood.
Research in developmental disabilities, 2022 · doi:10.1016/j.ridd.2022.104308