Short report: Longitudinal study on emotion understanding in children with and without developmental language disorder

Abstract

BackgroundChildren with Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) have difficult access to social interactions, which could in turn limit their opportunities to learn about others’ emotions. AimsThis study aimed to investigate the developmental trajectories of emotion understanding in young children with and without DLD. Methods and procedures95 DLD children and 149 non-DLD children were tested twice, with an approximately two-year interval (Mage = 3.58 years at Time 1), on three indices for emotion understanding (discrimination, identification, and attribution in emotion-evoking situations). Outcomes and resultsAt Time 2, DLD children fell behind their non-DLD peers on the non-verbal task for emotion discrimination, while catching up on the verbal tasks for emotion identification and attribution. The two groups developed most of these skills with a similar improvement over time, but DLD children showed a greater increase in positive emotion identification and attribution with age than non-DLD children. Conclusions and implicationsThe findings showed the potential of DLD children to understand others’ emotions in verbal tasks to a similar extent as their non-DLD peers. However, DLD children may still face difficulties understanding more implicit emotional messages in real-life situations, and longitudinal follow-ups are required to reveal these challenges.