Emotion Identification From Facial Expressions in Children Adopted Internationally

Abstract

Children adopted internationally who are exposed to institutional care receive less social interaction than children reared in families. These children spend their preadoptive life with individuals from their birth country and are adopted into families who may look and interact differently. The presumed patterns of limited social stimulation and transition from ethnically similar to ethnically and culturally different social interactions may affect these children's ability to accurately identify emotions from facial expressions. Thirty-five 4-year-old children adopted from Asia and Eastern Europe by U.S. families were compared with 33 nonadopted peers on the Diagnostic Analysis of Nonverbal Accuracy, Version 2 (DANVA2) Faces subtests. Correlation and regression analyses were completed with preadoption (adoption age, foster care exposure), postadoption environment (postadoption care duration, number of siblings, socioeconomic status), and individual (chronological age, gender, language competence) variables to determine related and predictive variables. The nonadopted group demonstrated better emotion identification than children internationally adopted, but no region-of-origin differences were found. English language performance was correlated with and predicted 20% of the variance in emotion identification of facial expressions on the DANVA2. Children adopted internationally who have stronger language ability tend to be more accurate in identifying emotions from facial expressions.