Emotion Recognition by Children with Down Syndrome: A Longitudinal Study

Background: According to the literature, children with Down syndrome (DS) have difficulties recognising facial expressions. Yet abilities to recognise emotional expressions are often assessed in tasks that imply comprehension of words for emotions. We investigated the development of these abilities in children with DS in a longitudinal study that did not involve lexical knowledge of emotions. Method: Children with DS and nonspecific intellectual disability and typically developing children matched for developmental age (DA) were assessed once a year over 3 years. They were asked to recognise the facial expression of an emotion after hearing a vocalisation. Results: In each annual session, children with DS were not significantly different from others at recognising emotions. Their abilities to discriminate basic emotions improved significantly and to a similar extent to those of other children. Conclusion: The findings indicate that children with DS develop emotion recognition abilities similarly to other children of the same DA.