Emotion Recognition in Children With Down Syndrome: Influence of Emotion Label and Expression Intensity

Mental State Language Development in Children With Down Syndrome Versus Typical Development

This study compared mental state language (talk about emotions, thoughts, intentions, etc.) used by 6- to 11-year-old children with Down syndrome (DS) to a younger typically developing (TD) comparison group matched by nonverbal cognition. We aimed to determine (1) whether mental state language use is delayed in DS relative to developmental expectations, and (2) if there are differences between groups in the association between mental state language and developmental factors (emotion knowledge, expressive language). Rate of mental state language use was significantly lower in the group with DS, but the number of different mental state terms was not significantly different. Nuanced patterns of similarity and difference emerged between groups regarding the association between mental state language and other developmental factors.

Searching for Best Predictors of Paralinguistic Comprehension and Production of Emotions in Communication in Adults With Moderate Intellectual Disability

Paralinguistic comprehension and production of emotions in communication include the skills of recognizing and interpreting emotional states with the help of facial expressions, prosody and intonation. In the relevant scientific literature, the skills of paralinguistic comprehension and production of emotions in communication are related primarily to receptive language abilities, although some authors found also their correlations with intellectual abilities and acoustic features of the voice. Therefore, the aim of this study was to investigate which of the mentioned variables (receptive language ability, acoustic features of voice, intellectual ability, social-demographic), presents the most relevant predictor of paralinguistic comprehension and paralinguistic production of emotions in communication in adults with moderate intellectual disabilities (MID). The sample included 41 adults with MID, 20–49 years of age (M = 34.34, SD = 7.809), 29 of whom had MID of unknown etiology, while 12 had Down syndrome. All participants are native speakers of Serbian. Two subscales from The Assessment Battery for Communication – Paralinguistic comprehension of emotions in communication and Paralinguistic production of emotions in communication, were used to assess the examinees from the aspect of paralinguistic comprehension and production skills. For the graduation of examinees from the aspect of assumed predictor variables, the following instruments were used: Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test was used to assess receptive language abilities, Computerized Speech Lab (“Kay Elemetrics” Corp., model 4300) was used to assess acoustic features of voice, and Raven’s Progressive Matrices were used to assess intellectual ability. Hierarchical regression analysis was applied to investigate to which extent the proposed variables present an actual predictor variables for paralinguistic comprehension and production of emotions in communication as dependent variables. The results of this analysis showed that only receptive language skills had statistically significant predictive value for paralinguistic comprehension of emotions (β = 0.468, t = 2.236, p < 0.05), while the factor related to voice frequency and interruptions, form the domain of acoustic voice characteristics, displays predictive value for paralinguistic production of emotions (β = 0.280, t = 2.076, p < 0.05). Consequently, this study, in the adult population with MID, evidenced a greater importance of voice and language in relation to intellectual abilities in understanding and producing emotions.

Emotional Lexicon in Down Syndrome

We studied comprehension of emotion versus concrete/abstract words in Down syndrome (DS). Study 1 compared 26 participants with DS and 26 typically developing (TD) children matched on verbal ability. Results showed no difference between groups. Study 2 assessed whether chronological age (CA) and (non)verbal abilities predicted developmental trajectories of comprehension in 36 children with DS and 143 TD children. For the latter, these variables predicted comprehension of all three word types. For the former, receptive vocabulary predicted comprehension of all word types, but CA and nonverbal reasoning only predicted comprehension of concrete words. This suggests that people with DS have no specific emotional lexicon deficit. Supporting their general lexical development would help them access abstract and emotional meanings.

Recognition of Basic Emotions with and without the Use of Emotional Vocabulary by Adolescents with Down Syndrome

Background: Children with Down syndrome (DS) often experience behavioral and emotional issues that complicate their socialization process and may lead to psychopathological disorders. These problems may be related to deficits affecting emotional knowledge, particularly emotional vocabulary. Because emotional vocabulary makes it easier for typically developing children to identify emotions, a deficit affecting it in DS could be problematic. Methods: Twenty-eight adolescents with DS matched with typically developing (TD) children for their score on the Benton Facial Recognition Test were asked to recognize six emotional expressions presented in the form of filmed sequences, based on (1) nonverbal cues such as prosody, and (2) an emotional label. Results: The adolescents with DS recognized the six basic emotional expressions at a level comparable to that of the TD children in both conditions (with and without emotional vocabulary), but the facilitating effect of vocabulary was lower in that group. Conclusions: This study does not show a deficit affecting emotion recognition in DS, but it emphasizes the importance of early acquisition of emotional knowledge in this syndrome. Regular and varied use of internal state words should be encouraged in familial interactions, and education should include specifically adapted social and emotional learning programs.

The Use of Virtual and Computational Technologies in the Psychomotor and Cognitive Development of Children with Down Syndrome: A Systematic Literature Review

Individuals with Down syndrome (DS) have numerous comorbidities due to trisomy 21. However, virtual reality-based therapy (VRT) has been used nowadays as a learning and visual motor tool in order to facilitate the development and learning process of this group. The aim of this article was to carry out an integrative review of the literature on the use of virtual and computational technologies in the stimulation of children with DS. A search was carried out according to the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) through single key words or their combinations using AND or OR operators: “Down syndrome” AND (“development” OR “cognition” OR “visomotor” OR “digital game” OR “virtual reality”). Eventually, 18 articles were included in our review. The games used in the research were able to stimulate, through the visual field, global motor skills, balance, body scheme and spatial organization, in addition to the learning of mathematical concepts, in order to directly influence the autonomous life activities, language skills, social skills and educational aspects of people with DS. Electronic games contribute to the teaching-learning relationship and stimulate neuropsychomotor and cognitive functions and development in children with DS.

Cognitive profiles in children and adolescents with Down syndrome

The Down syndrome (DS) phenotype is usually characterized by relative strengths in non-verbal skills and deficits in verbal processing, but high interindividual variability has been registered in the syndrome. The goal of this study was to explore the cognitive profile, considering verbal and non-verbal intelligence, of children and adolescents with DS, also taking into account interindividual variability. We particularly aimed to investigate whether this variability means that we should envisage more than one cognitive profile in this population. The correlation between cognitive profile and medical conditions, parents’ education levels and developmental milestones was also explored. Seventy-two children/adolescents with DS, aged 7–16 years, were assessed with the Wechsler Preschool and Primary Scale of Intelligence-III. Age-equivalent scores were adopted, and Verbal and Non-Verbal indices were obtained for each individual. The cognitive profile of the group as a whole was characterized by similar scores in the verbal and non-verbal domain. Cluster analysis revealed three different profiles, however: one group, with the lowest scores, had the typical profile associated with DS (with higher non-verbal than verbal intelligence); one, with intermediate scores, had greater verbal than non-verbal intelligence; and one, with the highest scores, fared equally well in the verbal and non-verbal domain. Three cognitive profiles emerged, suggesting that educational support for children and adolescents with DS may need to be more specific.

Sensitivity to Emotion Intensity and Recognition of Emotion Expression in Neurotypical Children

This study assessed two components of face emotion processing: emotion recognition and sensitivity to intensity of emotion expressions and their relation in children age 4 to 12 (N = 216). Results indicated a slower development in the accurate decoding of low intensity expressions compared to high intensity. Between age 4 and 12, children discriminated high intensity expressions better than low ones. The intensity of expression had a stronger impact on overall face expression recognition. High intensity happiness was better recognized than low intensity up to age 11, while children 4 to 12 had difficulties discriminating between high and low intensity sadness. Our results suggest that sensitivity to low intensity expressions acts as a complementary mediator between age and emotion expression recognition, while this was not the case for the recognition of high intensity expressions. These results could help in the development of specific interventions for populations presenting socio-cognitive and emotion difficulties.

Exploring different aspects of emotion understanding in adults with Down Syndrome

BACKGROUND

Adults with Down Syndrome (DS) present difficulties in emotion understanding, although research has mainly focused on emotion recognition (external aspects), and little is known about their performance in other complex components (mental and reflective aspects).

AIMS

This study aims to examine different aspects of emotion understanding in adults with DS, including a codification of their error pattern, and also to determine the association with other variables that are commonly impaired in adults with DS.

METHODS AND PROCEDURES

Twenty-two adults with DS and twenty-two children with typical development (TD) matched for vocabulary level were assessed with the Test of Emotion Comprehension (TEC), along with other non-verbal reasoning (NVR), structural language and working memory (WM) tasks.

OUTCOMES AND RESULTS

Adults with DS showed lower emotion competence than children with TD in different components of the TEC, and also a different pattern of errors was observed. Structural language, NVR and WM predicted distinct emotion understanding skills in different ways.

CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS

It is important to plan interventions aimed at improving particular aspects of emotion understanding skills for adults with DS, taking into account the different components, the type of error and the different cognitive and linguistic skills involved in each emotion understanding skill.

Narrative Abilities of Adults' With Down Syndrome as a Window to Their Morphosyntactic, Socio-Cognitive, and Prosodic Abilities

Down syndrome (DS) is the most common developmental disorder characterized by mild to moderate intellectual disability. Several studies have reported poor language and prosodic skills and contradictory results regarding individuals’ with DS socio-cognitive skills, whereas most of them have focused on children with DS. The present study attempts to explore adults’ with DS language, socio-cognitive and prosodic abilities via the use of story-retellings. Twenty adults with DS and two groups of TD children, one matched to their expressive vocabulary (TD-EVT) and the other matched to their non-verbal mental age (TD-RCPM), took part in the present study. Participants listened to a story while viewing a wordless picture PowerPoint presentation on a computer screen, and then, they were instructed to retell the story while viewing the pictures for a second time. Each participant listened to two stories, one with “lively” and one with “flat” prosody. Results revealed that adults’ with DS performance was comparable with the one presented by the TD-RCPM group, whereas the TD-EVT group performed significantly better in almost all variables. Individuals’ with DS re-narrations, however, contained significantly less complement clauses and internal state terms (related or not related to Theory of Mind–ToM) compared to the re-narrations of both control groups. In contrast, the group with DS performed similarly to both control groups in comprehension questions related to main characters’ internal state terms and significantly better compared to the TD-RCPM group in questions related to ToM. In terms of prosody, all three groups performed significantly better on story structure and comprehension questions when prosody was “lively” compared “flat” prosody. DS group’s re-narrations did not contain enough internal state terms, not due to their inability in recognizing them, but due to their poor morphosyntactic abilities, which did not allow them to find the proper means to express the main characters’ internal states. Prosody facilitated participants with DS in the comprehension and re-narration. This suggests that intervention programs based on prosody could support the language skills of adults with DS.

Psychometric properties of the Emotional Quotient Inventory: Youth Version-EQ-i:YV in Spanish adolescents with Down syndrome

BACKGROUND

The people with Down syndrome who are now adolescents can face a self-report questionnaire with guarantees of being answered with validity to evaluate areas of development that traditionally have not been able to be evaluated. This is the case of emotional intelligence, measured in this research with the Emotional Quotient Inventory: Youth Version-EQ-i:YV.

AIMS

To validate and analyse the scale's psychometric properties in adolescents with Down syndrome.

METHODS

A two-stage cross-sectional investigation was conducted. The inventory consists of 60 items that measure 5 dimensions. The test was administered to 644 adolescents with Down syndrome. We carried out exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses.

OUTCOMES

The 5-factor structure of the test was confirmed. The internal consistency of four dimensions and the EQ-i:YV's total calculated score yielded high values.

CONCLUSIONS

This new version of the EQ-i:YV represents a valid and reliable tool to assess emotional intelligence in Spanish adolescents with Down syndrome.

Assessment of emotional intelligence in adults with down syndrome: Psychometric properties of the Emotional Quotient Inventory

Introduction

The Emotional Quotient Inventory: Youth version-EQ-i:YV was developed by Bar-On & Parker in 2000 and later translated and adapted for the general Spanish adolescent population by Ferrandiz et al. in 2012. The Spanish scale presents similar psychometric properties to the original version (54 items and five subdimensions). The Emotional Quotient Inventory assesses a set of personal, emotional, and social skills that influence adaptation to and coping with environmental demands and pressures. These factors can influence an adolescent’s success later in life, health, and psychological well-being. Traditionally, research in Down syndrome (DS) has focused on identifying cognitive deficits, relatively little is known about emotional intelligence (EI) and there are no scales that measure EI in people with DS adults.

Objectives

To validate and analyze the psychometric properties of the scale in the clinical population, specifically in Spanish adults with DS (EQ-i: SVDS).

Methods

A cross-sectional investigation was carried out in several stages. Descriptive, exploratory factorial (n = 345), confirmatory (n = 397), and scale reliability analyses were performed with better goodness-of-adjustment indices.

Results

A new scale named Emotional Quotient Inventory: Short Version for DS adults was obtained with a structure of four factors called mood, stress management, interpersonal, and intrapersonal. This new scale was reduced to 25 items. Goodness-of-fit indices were excellent (RMSEA [95% CI] = 02[.01; .03]; CFI = .99; TLI = .98; GFI = .87; AGFI = .89). The internal consistency of the four dimensions and the calculated total score (α = .91, ω = .93 and divided halves = .90) yielded high values in this clinical sample.

Discussion

The results recommend the use of the revised EQ-i: YV, the EQ-i: SVDS, to assess EI in adults with DS. The psychometric properties of this study are satisfactory but have four factors. The findings are discussed in terms of future research and practical implication to gain a more thorough understanding of how this population behaves on both a general and preventive level in order to teach EI properly.

Conclusions

This new version is a valid and reliable tool to evaluate emotional intelligence in people with intellectual disabilities and specifically in Spanish adults with DS.

Emotionale Kompetenzen bei drei- bis sechsjährigen Kindern mit und ohne Entwicklungsbeeinträchtigungen

Zusammenfassung. Das Ziel dieser Studie war es, den Zusammenhang zwischen emotionalen Kompetenzen und kognitiven oder sprachlichen Entwicklungsbeeinträchtigungen bei drei- bis sechsjährigen Kindern zu untersuchen. An der Studie nahmen 111 Kinder mit Entwicklungsbeeinträchtigungen teil, die einen Schulkindergarten besuchten, der an ein Förderzentrum mit Förderschwerpunkt geistige oder sprachliche Entwicklung angeschlossen ist, sowie 107 Kinder ohne Entwicklungsbeeinträchtigung, die einen allgemeinen Kindergärten besuchten. Die Kinder wurden mit dem „Inventar zur Erfassung emotionaler Kompetenzen bei Drei- bis Sechsjährigen“ (EMK 3 – 6) untersucht. Die pädagogischen Fachkräfte bewerteten die sozial-emotionalen Kompetenzen im Alltag mittels der „Verhaltensskalen für das Kindergartenalter“ (VSK). Interne Konsistenz und Inter-Korrelationen der EMK 3 – 6 – Untertests waren in beiden Teilgruppen hoch. Kinder mit kognitiven und/oder sprachlichen Entwicklungsbeeinträchtigungen wiesen signifikant niedrigere Werte in drei der vier emotionalen Kompetenzskalen des EMK 3 – 6 auf (Emotionen erkennen und benennen, Wissen um prosoziales Verhalten, Wissen um empathische Reaktionen). Bei Kindern mit Entwicklungsbeeinträchtigung, die einen Schulkindergarten besuchen, erwiesen sich das Wissen um prosoziale Kompetenzen und empathische Reaktionen als signifikante Prädiktoren für die Einschätzung der sozial-emotionalen Kompetenzen durch die pädagogischen Fachkräfte. Bei Kindern mit kognitiven und/oder sprachlichen Beeinträchtigungen sollte eine gezielte Förderung emotionaler Kompetenzen zur Schulvorbereitung gehören.

Emotion knowledge in neurotypical children and in those with down syndrome

This research aimed to assess two components of emotion knowledge (EK): receptive EK with face emotion identification and matching tasks, and emotion situation knowledge with the emotion attribution task (EAT). Study 1 assessed the development of EK in 265 neurotypical (NT) children (4-11 years), divided into four age groups. Overall, results showed a significant improvement of EK with age in the NT population for the three tasks, especially between the ages of 4/5 and 6/7. Children were less successful at the EAT in comparison to the other two tasks, indicating that receptive EK develops earlier than emotion situation knowledge. The presence of visual context (EAT) does not help to improve our children's overall facial emotion recognition, especially for anger and sadness, while these emotions are well recognized in isolated facial expressions (emotion identification). Study 2 compared EK between 32 children with Down syndrome (CA: M = 13 years, SD = 2.13) and 32 NT children (CA: M = 5.3 years, SD = 1.36): matched on a vocabulary task. Children with DS had more difficulties in EK than NT children. They had lower performances on the identification and the EAT tasks, while exhibited similar performances to their NT controls on the emotion matching task. Moreover, good abilities to identify emotion expressions seem to be a prerequisite for successful face-context recognition in NT children, but not in children with DS. Difficulties encountered by children with DS could result from executive dysfunction when dealing with complex visual information in addition to emotion processing difficulties.

Cross-Sectional Trajectories of Mental State Language Development in Children With Down Syndrome

Purpose This article (a) examined the cross-sectional trajectories of mental state language use in children with Down syndrome (DS) and (b) identified developmental factors associated with its use. Method Forty children with DS aged 6-11 years generated stories from a wordless picture book and completed an assessment battery of other linguistic, cognitive, and social-emotional skills. Their narratives were coded for mental state language density (the proportion of utterances containing mental state references) and diversity (the number of different mental state terms used). Results The emergence of mental state language use during narrative storytelling was observed across the sample; 0%-24% of children's utterances included references to mental states, and a variety of mental state terms were produced. Cross-sectional developmental trajectory analysis revealed that expressive vocabulary and morphosyntax were significantly related to increased mental state language density and diversity. Nonverbal emotion knowledge was significantly related to greater diversity of mental state terms used. Age and nonverbal cognition were not significant factors. Conclusions This first in-depth, within-syndrome characterization of mental state language use by school-age children with DS provides an important next step for understanding mental state and narrative development in this population. By identifying skills associated with the development of mental state language, this study provides an avenue for future longitudinal research to determine causal relationships, ultimately informing intervention efforts.

How Individuals With Down Syndrome Process Faces and Words Conveying Emotions? Evidence From a Priming Paradigm

Emotion recognition from facial expressions and words conveying emotions is considered crucial for the development of interpersonal relations (Pochon and Declercq, 2013). Although Down syndrome (DS) has received growing attention in the last two decades, emotional development has remained underexplored, perhaps because of the stereotype of high sociability in persons with DS. Yet recently, there is some literature that is suggesting the existence of specific deficits in emotion recognition in DS. The current study aimed to expand our knowledge on how individuals with DS process emotion expressions from faces and words by adopting a powerful methodological paradigm, namely priming. The purpose is to analyse to what extent emotion recognition in DS can occur through different processes than in typical development. Individuals with DS (N = 20) were matched to a control group (N = 20) on vocabulary knowledge (PPTV) and non-verbal ability (Raven’s matrices). Subsequently a priming paradigm was adopted: stimuli were photos of faces with different facial expressions (happy, sad, neutral) and three words (happy, sad, neutral). On a computer screen the first item (face or word) was presented for a very short time (prime) and afterward a stimulus (face or word) appeared (target). Participants had to recognize whether the target was an emotion (sad/happy) or not (neutral). Four prime-target pairs were presented (face-word; word-face; word-word; face-word) in two conditions: congruent (same emotion prime/target) and incongruent (different emotion prime/target). The results failed to show evidence for differential processing during emotion recognition between the two groups matched for verbal and non-verbal abilities. Both groups showed a typical priming effect: In the incongruent condition, slower reaction times were recorded, in particular when the target to be recognized is the face, providing evidence that the stimuli were indeed processed. Overall, the data of the current work seem to support the idea of similar developmental trajectories in individuals with DS and TD of the same verbal and non-verbal level, at least as far as the processing of simple visual and linguistic stimuli conveying basic emotions is concerned. Results are interpreted in relation to recent finding on emotion recognition from faces and words in DS.

The Social Responsiveness Scale (SRS-2) in school-age children with Down syndrome at low risk for autism spectrum disorder

BACKGROUND AND AIMS

Little is known about how autism spectrum disorder (ASD) symptoms present in individuals with Down syndrome (DS). Some behaviors may be symptomatic of comorbid ASD or more broadly representative of the DS phenotype. A prior research study documented elevated ASD-like symptoms in adolescents and young adults with DS without comorbid ASD, using a common ASD risk screening tool-the Social Responsiveness Scale (SRS). The current study applied a similar approach to younger children with DS using the SRS-2. The primary aim was to document patterns of ASD-like symptoms in children with DS at low risk of comorbid ASD to distinguish the symptoms that may be present across DS in general.

METHODS

SRS-2 standard scores were analyzed in a sample of 40 children with DS, 6-11 years old, who were considered to be at low risk for ASD based on the Social Communication Questionnaire (SCQ) screener. Other developmental characteristics (i.e., age, nonverbal IQ, expressive language), social skills, and problem behaviors were also examined across the sample.

RESULTS

SRS-2 scores were significantly elevated in this sample compared to the normative population sample. A pattern of ASD-like symptomatology was observed across SRS-2 subdomains. These findings were similar to the findings of the prior study. However, nuanced differences were observed across the two samples that may represent developmental differences across different ages in this population.

CONCLUSIONS

Replicating and extending a prior study's findings, certain ASD-like behaviors may occur in individuals with DS who are at low risk for comorbid ASD.

IMPLICATIONS

Understanding the pattern of ASD-like behaviors that occur in children with DS who are at low risk for comorbid ASD will help clinicians in screening and identification efforts. In particular, it will lead to better specification of the behaviors or symptoms that are not characteristic of the DS phenotype and thus are red flags for comorbid ASD in this population.

Preliminary Study on Psychometric Properties of an Anxiety Scale in Down Syndrome with Anxiety Symptoms

BACKGROUND

anxiety remains one of the most common disorders in typically developing children and young adults. Adolescents with Down syndrome (DS) lack diagnostic tests for evaluation.

METHODS

this study evaluated the psychometric properties of the Screen for Child Anxiety Related Emotional Disorders inventory in its self-report version in 63 adolescents with anxiety symptoms with DS. The inclusion criteria for the studies were trisomy 21 and a chronological age between 8 and 17 years. Psychometric properties arestrictly evaluated with the sample exceeding a cutoff point in anxiety symptomatology. A confirmatory factorial analysis tested two models for the new evaluation test.

RESULTS

both models confirmed a four-factor structure (somatic/panic, social phobia, generalized anxiety, and separation anxiety). Model 2, nevertheless, had fewer items and a better fit, and it also showed a high correlation with other anxiety detection measures and adequate internal consistency.

CONCLUSIONS

the importance of validating psychopathological anxiety tests for children and young people with DS in order to build good mental health is discussed, emphasizing the need to provide easy and short-term tests on cognitive and emotional aspects in people with intellectual disabilities.

Emotion Perception in Members of Norwegian Mensa

Are people with superior intelligence also superior in interpreting the emotions of others? Some studies find that an underlying g-factor links all mental processes leading to an expectation of a positive answer to the question, while other studies find that there is a cost to giftedness. No previous study have tested social cognition among highly gifted, or the Mensa society specifically. The study measures emotion recognition in 63 members of the Norwegian Mensa and 101 community controls. The Mensa group had a higher total score on the EmoBio test and was specifically better at differentiating the anger emotion, otherwise hypothesized to be mediated by subcortical processes. There was no difference in heterogeneity between the groups, contrary to the expectation of an autistic subgroup in Mensa. The study indicate that the positive manifold extends also to social cognition, and runs counter to the concept of a cost to giftedness.

Relation between processing facial identity and emotional expression in typically developing school-age children and those with Down syndrome

The main purposes of this research were to examine the relation between the processing of face identity and emotion expressions and then discern the significance of emotional expressions using Bruce et al. tasks. Two studies were conducted. Study 1 examined 225 typically developing (TD) children age 4 to 12. Results suggested that early recognition of complete faces and interpretation of emotional expression might depend on local processing abilities, while the recognition of masked faces and emotion expression matching seemed to share configural processing. Study 2 compared 22 children with Down syndrome (DS) to two TD groups matched on mental age (MA group) and chronological age (CA group). Results showed that children with DS processed the identity of complete faces (local processing) similarly to the MA and CA groups. In contrast, their performances for masked faces (configural processing) indicated a developmental delay as they were only comparable to the MA group. Children with DS were also able to identify the emotion expressions according to labels as well as the two control groups, while they had more difficulties on the matching condition. Furthermore, specific difficulties in processing the surprise expression were observed, rather than general difficulties in encoding emotion expressions. Finally, their performances on emotion matching tasks seemed to be supported by local information processing, which might explain their lower scores compared to CA controls that mainly used configural information. These results could aid in the development of targeted interventions for DS to improve their social skills.

Social Cognition in Down Syndrome: Face Tuning in Face-Like Non-Face Images

Individuals with Down syndrome (DS) are widely believed to possess considerable socialization strengths. However, the findings on social cognition capabilities are controversial. In the present study, we investigated whether individuals with DS exhibit shortage in face tuning, one of the indispensable components of social cognition. For this purpose, we implemented a recently developed Face-n-Food paradigm with food-plate images composed of food ingredients such as fruits and vegetables. The key benefit of such face-like non-face images is that single elements do not facilitate face processing. In a spontaneous recognition task, 25 children with DS aged 9 to 18 years were presented with a set of Face-n-Food images bordering on the Giuseppe Arcimboldo style. The set of images was administered in a predetermined order from the least to most resembling a face. In DS individuals, thresholds for recognition of the Face-n-Food images as a face were drastically higher as compared not only with typically developing controls, but also with individuals with autistic spectrum disorders and Williams-Beuren syndrome. This outcome represents a significant step toward better conceptualization of the visual social world in DS and neurodevelopmental disorders in general.