Explored the effect of person familiarity and parental involvement on 3.5-month-old infants' sensitivity to the dynamic emotion expressions of others. Found that infants looked differentially at mothers' expressions but not at those of fathers or unfamiliar adults, and that parent-child involvement significantly influenced infants' developing…

This study of 501 children and adults found that subjects with mental retardation or borderline intelligence were less proficient at identifying facial expressions of emotion than were children of average intelligence. Among individuals with mental retardation or borderline intelligence, recognition increased with intelligence quotient. Among…

In 2 experiments with 6 boys (ages 12 and 13) having mild and moderate mental retardation, directed rehearsal was used to teach subjects to either recognize or produce 6 basic facial expressions of emotion. Training in both skills was effective, and the recognition training was maintained at 8-week and 12-week assessments following instruction.…

The identification of facial expressions of emotion was studied in normal and psychiatrically disturbed children. Schizophrenic children were significantly less accurate than other children in emotion identification. Anxious-depressed children made more errors than unsocialized-aggressive and normal children. Normal and unsocialized-aggressive…

Compared the recognition of emotion from facial expression by 72 Chinese and 72 Australian children using photographs of Chinese and Caucasian faces. Results provide some evidence for an ethnic bias effect in emotion recognition and demonstrate an increase in overall accuracy with age. Cultural differences are discussed. (SLD)

The perception of emotions from facial expression was studied with 68 schizotypal individuals and a control group (n=40). The results did not support the hypotheses that the schizotypal group would display more restricted similarity range in judging emotions, judge emotions as less pleasant, and display less accuracy in labelling emotions. (SW)

Two experiments assessed recognition of emotion among physically abused and neglected preschoolers. Results showed that neglected children had more difficulty discriminating emotional expressions that control or abused children. Abused children displayed response bias for angry facial expressions. Control children viewed discrete emotions as…

Two studies used event-related potentials (ERPs) to examine neural manifestations of emotion recognition in 7-month-old infants. In the first study, 20 infants were presented with 2 alternating achromatic slides of the same female model posing a happy and a fearful expression. Infants' ERPs revealed a prominent positive component to the happy face…

In a study of 86 individuals with mental retardation, participants were asked to identify the appropriate facial expression or word that corresponded to the emotional response in a vignette. Results indicated that age correlated negatively with choosing the right word or picture. IQ was a significant predictor of performance. (CR)

This literature review discusses 21 studies on facial emotion recognition by persons with mental retardation in terms of methodological characteristics, stimulus material, salient variables and their relation to recognition tasks, and emotion recognition deficits in mental retardation. A table provides comparative data on all 21 studies. (DB)

Examined influence of nondiscrepance and discrepance between situational and expressive cues on children's emotion recognition. Videotaped episodes in which actors portrayed emotions were presented to four- to eight-year-old girls. Girls' responses to questions regarding the perceived cues reflected a developmental trend from centration to…

Examined visual perception of emotion in typically developing and physically abused children, focusing on the sequential, content-based properties of feature detection in emotion recognition processes. Found that physically abused children accurately identified facial displays of anger on the basis of less sensory input than did typically…

Examined relations between 90 four-year-old preschoolers' social behavior and emotion recognition accuracy and bias with familiar classmates. Found that recognition biases were more important than recognition accuracy in predicting social behavior, that angry recognition biases negatively influenced social behavior, and that recognition accuracy…

Preschool and third-grade children judged the emotional states of other children on the basis of expressive cues alone, contextual cues alone, or both expressive and contextual cues. Older children were more accurate than younger children only when given multiple cues. Results are discussed in terms of cognitive-developmental and social learning…