Wishart J G, Cebula K R, Willis D S, Pitcairn T K
Moray House School of Education, Edinburgh, UK.
J Intellect Disabil Res. 2007 Jul;51(Pt 7):551-63. doi: 10.1111/j.1365-2788.2006.00947.x.
Interpreting emotional expressions is a socio-cognitive skill central to interpersonal interaction. Poor emotion recognition has been reported in autism but is less well understood in other kinds of intellectual disabilities (ID), with procedural differences making comparisons across studies and syndromes difficult. This study aimed to compare directly facial emotion recognition skills in children with fragile X syndrome (FXS), Down's syndrome (DS) and non-specific intellectual disability (NSID), contrasting ability and error profiles with those of typically developing (TD) children of equivalent cognitive and linguistic status.
Sixty children participated in the study: 15 FXS, 15 DS, 15 NSID and 15 TD children. Standardised measures of cognitive, language and socialisation skills were collected for all children, along with measures of performance on two photo-matching tasks: an 'identity-matching' task (to control for basic face-processing ability) and an 'emotion-matching' task (happiness, sadness, anger, surprise, fear or disgust).
Identity-matching ability did not differ across the four child groups. Only the DS group performed significantly more poorly on the emotion-matching task and only in comparison to the TD group, with fear recognition an area of particular difficulty.
Findings support previous evidence of emotion recognition abilities commensurate with overall developmental level in children with FXS or NSID, but not DS. They also suggest, however, that syndrome-specific difficulties may be subtle and detectable, at least in smaller-scale studies, only in comparison with TD matches, and not always across syndromes. Implications for behavioural phenotype theory, educational interventions and future research are discussed.
解读情绪表达是人际互动中一项至关重要的社会认知技能。据报道，自闭症患者存在情绪识别能力差的情况，但在其他类型的智力障碍（ID）中对此了解较少，由于程序上的差异，跨研究和综合征进行比较很困难。本研究旨在直接比较脆性X综合征（FXS）、唐氏综合征（DS）和非特异性智力障碍（NSID）儿童的面部情绪识别技能，将其能力和错误模式与认知和语言水平相当的典型发育（TD）儿童进行对比。
60名儿童参与了该研究：15名FXS儿童、15名DS儿童、15名NSID儿童和15名TD儿童。收集了所有儿童的认知、语言和社交技能的标准化测量数据，以及两项照片匹配任务的表现测量数据：一项“身份匹配”任务（以控制基本面部处理能力）和一项“情绪匹配”任务（快乐、悲伤、愤怒、惊讶、恐惧或厌恶）。
四个儿童组在身份匹配能力上没有差异。只有DS组在情绪匹配任务上表现明显更差，且仅与TD组相比，恐惧识别是一个特别困难的领域。
研究结果支持了之前关于FXS或NSID儿童情绪识别能力与总体发育水平相称的证据，但DS儿童并非如此。然而，研究结果还表明，特定综合征的困难可能很细微，至少在小规模研究中，只有与TD匹配组相比才能检测到，而且并非总是在不同综合征之间都能检测到。文中讨论了对行为表型理论、教育干预和未来研究的启示。
