Difficulty in Facial Emotion Recognition in Children with ADHD

BACKGROUND: It is known that children with ADHD have more difficulty in facial emotion recognition, which is processing one's emotion by facial expressions, compared to normal children. This study was designed to investigate the differences in facial emotion recognition between ADHD and normal control. METHODS: Subjects were recruited from the Suwon Project, a cohort comprising a nonrandom convenience sample of 117, 9-year-old ethnic Koreans. Parents of the participants completed study questionnaires of Korean version of Child Behavior Check List (K-CBCL) and ADHD Rating Scale. Semi-structured interviews according to Kiddie-schedule for affective disorders and schizophrenia-present and lifetime version (K-SADS-PL-K) were conducted for both the parents and the children. Emotion Recognition Test(ERT) was performed for children who had been diagnosed with ADHD (N=10). RESULTS: ADHD children (N=10) showed impaired recognition on emotional differentiation and contextual understanding compared with normal controls (N=24). There was no statistically significant difference in the recognition of positive facial emotions (happy and surprise) and negative facial emotions (anger, sadness, disgust and fear) between the two groups. In addition, children with more serious attention and behavioral problems showed significantly negative correlation with contextual understanding, emotional differentiation and total ERT score. CONCLUSION: In this study, children with ADHD showed lower performance in emotional differentiation and contextual understanding compared to normal control, and those with more serious symptoms of ADHD showed negative correlation. The results can be explained that the ADHD children have a defect in attention and emotion processing ability. Schoolage children with ADHD should put effort in emotional recognition ability for enhancing social function.

Author dc:creator

• 안, 나영

Contributors dc:contributor

• 신, 윤미
• 대학원 의학과
• 201124123

• 주의력결핍-과잉행동장애
• 얼굴표정정서인식
• 정서분별
• 맥락이해
• ADHD
• Facial emotion recognition
• Emotional differentiation
• Contextual understanding

Language dc:language

ko

Identifier

http://dcoll.ajou.ac.kr:9080/dcollection/jsp/common/DcLoOrgPer.jsp?sItemId=000000015001
000000015001

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:repository.ajou.ac.kr:201003/8658