Department of Logopedics, Abo Akademi University, Turku, Finland.
Faculty of Humanities/Research Unit of Logopedics and Child Language Research Center, University of Oulu, Oulu, Finland.
Int J Lang Commun Disord. 2020 Mar;55(2):231-242. doi: 10.1111/1460-6984.12514. Epub 2019 Dec 3.
Many children with neurodevelopmental disorders such as autism spectrum disorder (ASD), attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) or developmental language disorder (DLD) have difficulty recognizing and understanding emotions. However, the reasons for these difficulties are currently not well understood.
To compare the emotion recognition skills of children with neurodevelopmental disorders as well as those children's skills with the skills of their typically developing (TD) age peers. Also, to identify the role of underlying factors in predicting emotion recognition skills.
METHODS & PROCEDURES: The 6-10-year-old children (n = 50) who participated in the study had either ASD, ADHD or DLD and difficulties recognizing emotions from face and/or in voice. TD age peers (n = 106) served as controls. Children's skills were tested using six forced-choice tasks with emotional nonsense words, meaningful emotional sentences, the FEFA 2 test, photographs, video clips and a task in which facial expressions and tones of voice had to be matched. Expressive vocabulary, rapid serial naming, auditory and visual working memory and Theory of Mind skills were explored as possible explanatory factors of the emotion recognition difficulties of the diagnosed children.
OUTCOMES & RESULTS: Children with ASD, ADHD or DLD did not significantly differ from each other in their linguistic or cognitive skills. Moreover, there were only minor differences between children with these diagnoses in recognizing facial expressions and emotional tone of voice and matching the two. The only significant difference was that children with ADHD recognized facial expressions in photographs better than children with DLD. The participants with diagnoses scored significantly lower than the controls in all but one emotion recognition tasks presented. According to the linear regression analysis, first-order Theory of Mind skills predicted the delay relative to typical development in the recognition of facial expressions in the FEFA 2 test, and expressive vocabulary and working memory skills together predicted the delay in the recognition of emotions in the matching task.
CONCLUSIONS & IMPLICATIONS: Children with ASD, ADHD or DLD showed very similar emotion recognition skills and were also found to be significantly delayed in their development of these skills. Some predictive factors related to linguistic and cognitive skills were found for these difficulties. Information about impaired emotion recognition and underlying linguistic and cognitive skills helps to select intervention procedures. Without this information, therapy might unnecessarily focus on only symptoms.
许多患有神经发育障碍的儿童，如自闭症谱系障碍（ASD）、注意力缺陷多动障碍（ADHD）或发育性语言障碍（DLD），在识别和理解情绪方面存在困难。然而，目前还不清楚这些困难的原因。
比较神经发育障碍儿童的情绪识别技能，以及这些儿童与典型发育（TD）年龄同伴的技能。此外，还确定潜在因素在预测情绪识别技能方面的作用。
研究对象为 6-10 岁的儿童（n=50），他们患有 ASD、ADHD 或 DLD，并且在识别面部和/或声音中的情绪方面存在困难。TD 年龄的同伴（n=106）作为对照组。使用六项强制性选择任务测试儿童的技能，包括带有情绪的无意义单词、有意义的情绪句子、FEFA 2 测试、照片、视频剪辑以及需要匹配面部表情和语调的任务。探索表达性词汇、快速连续命名、听觉和视觉工作记忆以及心理理论技能作为诊断儿童情绪识别困难的可能解释因素。
患有 ASD、ADHD 或 DLD 的儿童在语言或认知技能方面彼此之间没有显著差异。此外，这些诊断儿童在识别面部表情和情绪语调以及匹配两者方面只有很小的差异。唯一显著的差异是 ADHD 儿童在识别照片中的面部表情方面优于 DLD 儿童。除了一个情绪识别任务外，所有参与者的诊断评分都显著低于对照组。根据线性回归分析，一阶心理理论技能预测了在 FEFA 2 测试中识别面部表情相对于典型发育的延迟，而表达性词汇和工作记忆技能共同预测了在匹配任务中识别情绪的延迟。
患有 ASD、ADHD 或 DLD 的儿童表现出非常相似的情绪识别技能，并且他们在这些技能的发展方面也明显滞后。发现了一些与语言和认知技能相关的预测因素与这些困难有关。关于受损的情绪识别以及潜在的语言和认知技能的信息有助于选择干预程序。如果没有这些信息，治疗可能会不必要地仅关注症状。
