Social-Emotional and Behavioural Difficulties in Children with Neurodevelopmental Disorders: Emotion Perception in Daily Life and in a Formal Assessment Context.
Joanna Löytömäki, Marja-Leena Laakso, Kerttu Huttunen
PMID 36184695WHAT IT FOUND
Children with ASD, ADHD, and DLD showed similar delays in emotion discrimination and high rates of behavioural problems.
Poor voice tone discrimination was linked to having no friends, affecting 32% of the clinical group. These difficulties appeared regardless of specific diagnosis.
Key findings
01Children with ASD, ADHD, and DLD showed similar levels of emotion recognition difficulties in daily life and delayed emotion discrimination skills compared to typically developing peers.
02Almost one-third of the children in the clinical group had no friends they met weekly, and this lack of friendship was associated with greater delays in discriminating emotional tone of voice.
03Parents reported significantly higher rates of behavioural problems (90% above clinical cut-off) than professionals did (76% above cut-off) for the same children.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for PTsWhat it means for OTsWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
The sample size was small, particularly for the DLD group (n=13), which limits the power to detect differences between diagnostic subgroups. Professionals' and parents' ratings of behaviour and emotion recognition showed poor agreement, suggesting that observations may be context-dependent. The emotion discrimination tasks used posed, intense emotional expressions that may not reflect the subtler cues encountered in daily life. The study was cross-sectional, so it cannot determine whether poor emotion discrimination causes social isolation or results from it.
Declared interests
Funded by the Social Security Institute of Finland, Hämeen Rahasto, Otto A. Malm Lahjoitusrahasto, and the University of Oulu.
The easy way to misread this
Do not assume that emotion discrimination delays are the sole cause of social isolation. The study found an association, but cross-sectional data cannot prove direction; children with fewer friends may have had less opportunity to practice these skills, rather than the skills deficit causing the lack of friends.