Visual processing of emotional dynamic faces in 22q11.2 deletion syndrome.
People with 22q11DS read emotions accurately but slower, partly because they skip the nose on happy and fearful faces.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Researchers showed short movie clips of happy, fearful, and neutral faces to people with 22q11.2 deletion syndrome and to typical controls. While the clips played, an eye-tracker recorded where each person looked on the face.
After each clip, participants picked the emotion they saw. The team then compared accuracy and gaze patterns between the two groups.
What they found
Both groups labeled the emotions equally well. The 22q11DS group, however, took longer to respond and spent less time looking at the nose when happy or fearful faces appeared.
The nose area holds key muscle cues for happy and fearful expressions. Reduced focus there may explain the slower reaction time.
How this fits with other research
Åsberg Johnels et al. (2017) saw a similar gaze shift in autism: kids with ASD looked less at the mouth for happy faces. Both studies suggest that neurodevelopmental conditions change which face parts matter most.
Song et al. (2016) found that children with ASD under-use the eye region only for fear. The 22q11DS group, in contrast, cut nose viewing for both happy and fear. The two papers together argue for emotion-specific gaze training rather than a one-size-fits-all approach.
McLennan et al. (2008) reported no overall eye-looking difference in ASD for simple emotions. Eussen et al. (2016) add nuance: timing and feature choice, not total looking time, reveal subtle deficits. The papers do not clash; they simply zoom in on different metrics.
Why it matters
If you test emotion recognition in clients with 22q11DS, do not rely only on accuracy scores. Record response time and watch where they look. Adding brief prompts to “check the nose” during happy or fearful clips may speed up decisions and strengthen social cues they might otherwise miss.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
INTRODUCTION: The 22q11.2 deletion syndrome (22q11DS) is a neurogenetic syndrome. Individuals affected by this syndrome present poor social functioning and a high risk for the development of psychiatric disorders. Accurate emotion recognition and visual exploration of faces represent important skills for appropriate development of social cognition in individuals with 22q11DS. For these reasons, there is elevated interest in establishing relevant ways to test the mechanisms associated with emotion recognition in patients with 22q11DS. METHODS: This study investigated emotional recognition and visual exploration of emotional faces in persons with 22q11DS, with a dynamic emotion task using an eye-tracking device. To our knowledge, no previous studies have used emotional dynamic stimuli with 22q11DS, despite improved ecological validity of dynamic stimuli compared with static images. Furthermore, these stimuli provide the opportunity to collect reaction times, as indicators of the emotional intensity necessary for identifying each emotion. RESULTS: In our task, we observed comparable accuracy in emotion recognition in the 22q11DS and healthy control groups. However, individuals with 22q11DS were slower to recognise the emotions. They also spent less time looking at the nose during happy and fearful faces. CONCLUSIONS: These results suggest that individuals with 22q11DS may need either more time or more pronounced emotional cues to correctly label facial expressions.
Journal of intellectual disability research : JIDR, 2016 · doi:10.1111/jir.12250