Pochon Régis, Touchet Claire, Ibernon Laure
Cognition, Health and Socialization Laboratory, Higher School of Teaching and Education, University of Reims Champagne-Ardenne, 51097 Reims, France.
Research Center in Psychology: Cognition, Psyche and Organizations, University of Picardie Jules Verne, 80025 Amiens, France.
Brain Sci. 2017 May 23;7(6):55. doi: 10.3390/brainsci7060055.
Several studies have reported that persons with Down syndrome (DS) have difficulties recognizing emotions; however, there is insufficient research to prove that a deficit of emotional knowledge exists in DS. The aim of this study was to evaluate the recognition of emotional facial expressions without making use of emotional vocabulary, given the language problems known to be associated with this syndrome. The ability to recognize six emotions was assessed in 24 adolescents with DS. Their performance was compared to that of 24 typically developing children with the same nonverbal-developmental age, as assessed by Raven's Progressive Matrices. Analysis of the results revealed no global difference; only marginal differences in the recognition of different emotions appeared. Study of the developmental trajectories revealed a developmental difference: the nonverbal reasoning level assessed by Raven's matrices did not predict success on the experimental tasks in the DS group, contrary to the typically developing group. These results do not corroborate the hypothesis that there is an emotional knowledge deficit in DS and emphasize the importance of using dynamic, strictly nonverbal tasks in populations with language disorders.
多项研究报告称，唐氏综合征（DS）患者在识别情绪方面存在困难；然而，尚无足够的研究能证明DS患者存在情绪知识缺陷。鉴于已知该综合征与语言问题相关，本研究的目的是在不使用情绪词汇的情况下评估对面部表情情绪的识别。对24名患有DS的青少年识别六种情绪的能力进行了评估。将他们的表现与24名具有相同非言语发育年龄的正常发育儿童的表现进行比较，非言语发育年龄通过瑞文渐进性矩阵测验进行评估。结果分析显示没有总体差异；仅在不同情绪的识别上出现了微小差异。对发育轨迹的研究揭示了一种发育差异：与正常发育组相反，通过瑞文矩阵测验评估的非言语推理水平并不能预测DS组在实验任务上的成功。这些结果并未证实DS患者存在情绪知识缺陷这一假设，并强调了在有语言障碍的人群中使用动态、严格非言语任务的重要性。
