Abstract
The ability to accurately identify and label emotions in the self and others is crucial for successful social interactions and good mental health. In the current study we tested the longitudinal relationship between early language skills and recognition of facial and vocal emotion cues in a representative UK population cohort with diverse language and cognitive skills (N = 369), including a large sample of children that met criteria for Developmental Language Disorder (DLD, N = 97). Language skills, but not non-verbal cognitive ability, at age 5–6 predicted emotion recognition at age 10–12. Children that met the criteria for DLD showed a large deficit in recognition of facial and vocal emotion cues. The results highlight the importance of language in supporting identification of emotions from non-verbal cues. Impairments in emotion identification may be one mechanism by which language disorder in early childhood predisposes children to later adverse social and mental health outcomes.
Highlights
Recognition of emotional cues, such as facial and verbal expressions, is an important social skill
Of the 384 participants who were seen for assessment in Year 6, 362 completed the facial emotion recognition task and 359 (63 with Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) and 27 with LD+ additional diagnoses) completed the vocal emotion recognition task
We found evidence for a moderate positive association between language competence at age 5–6 and recognition of facial and vocal emotional cues at age 10–12 supporting our hypothesis that early language skills are positively associated with later emotion recognition ability
Summary
Recognition of emotional cues, such as facial and verbal expressions, is an important social skill. It provides us with information about other people’s internal emotional states and helps us to interpret and predict their behaviour. Children have typically acquired the vocabulary for basic emotions by 4–6 years of age (Baron-Cohen et al, 2010; Ridgeway, Waters & Kuczaj, 1985), but accuracy in identifying non-verbal emotional cues continues to improve into late adolescence (Grosbras, Ross & Belin, 2018; Herba & Phillips, 2004; Rodger et al, 2015). But not general cognitive ability, predicts children’s recognition of emotion from facial and vocal cues.
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