Facial emotion labeling in language impaired children

The few studies that have investigated emotion labeling in children with specific language impairment (SLI) have generally focused on global identification performances and appear contradictory. The current study is a fine-grained examination of how children with SLI and typical peers differ in the accuracy of their emotional lexicon use. Children underwent a free labeling task of five basic emotions expressed by still face photographs. Results revealed that children with SLI were less accurate in their label use than typical children. However, pattern of confusions between the two groups differed only by a confusion between sadness and anger displayed by the SLI group. It is argued that this emotion labeling deficiency may rely on semantic fields overlap.