SLPOtherJournal of intellectual disability research : JIDR2025

Comparative study of emotional facial expression recognition among Prader-Willi syndrome subtypes.

A Perosanz, J F López-Paz, I Amayra and 2 others

PMID 39313880

WHAT IT FOUND

The genetic subtypes did not differ in non-contextualised emotion recognition.

Children with Prader-Willi syndrome were slower and less accurate than controls, and some contextualised situations showed slower responses in the mUPD subtype.

Key findings

01No statistically significant differences were found between the DEL and mUPD subtypes in non-contextualised emotion recognition accuracy or reaction time.

02Controls had higher response accuracy and shorter reaction times than both PWS subtypes on the FEEL emotion recognition test.

03In some contextualised situations, the DEL group had shorter reaction times than the mUPD group.

STILL TO COME

How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs

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What it does not show

The study included small groups, so it may not have been able to detect differences between genetic subtypes. Cognitive ability was not assessed, although intellectual ability may influence emotion recognition. The emotion recognition tools were not validated for people with intellectual disability or borderline intellectual functioning. The control group was not recruited specifically for this study and came from a previous reference sample. Only deletion and maternal uniparental disomy subtypes were compared, not all genetic causes of Prader-Willi syndrome.

Declared interests

The authors declared no conflicts of interest. The study was funded by a Basque Government predoctoral grant.

The easy way to misread this

Do not conclude that genetic subtype causes poorer emotion recognition. The DEL and mUPD subtypes showed no statistically significant difference in non-contextualised emotion recognition, and the study did not assess cognitive ability.

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