The association between language and recognition of facial emotional expressions in elderly individuals.
Helen Capeleto Francisco, Allan Gustavo Bregola, Ana Carolina Ottaviani and 5 others
PMID 35894306WHAT IT FOUND
Elderly people with better language scores were more accurate at recognizing surprise and disgust faces.
However, the group with better language was also younger and more educated. It is unclear if language itself caused the difference.
Key findings
01Better performance on the language domain of the ACE-R was significantly associated with better recognition of surprise and disgust facial expressions.
02Participants with the best language scores were younger and had more years of schooling than those with the worst scores.
03There was no significant association between total facial emotion recognition score and language performance.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
The study design is cross-sectional, so it cannot prove that language ability causes better emotion recognition. The group with good language scores was significantly younger and more educated than the group with poor scores. Age and education are known to affect emotion recognition, so it is difficult to separate the effect of language from these other factors. The sample was recruited from family health units, which may not represent all elderly people in the community. The study excluded people with severe hearing loss or history of stroke, limiting generalizability to those populations.
Declared interests
The study was supported by CAPES and FAPESP, Brazilian government research funding agencies. No commercial conflicts of interest were declared.
The easy way to misread this
Do not conclude that poor language skills cause poor emotion recognition. The patients with better language scores were also younger and had more education, and the study did not prove that language itself was the reason for the difference in recognizing faces.