Aims: The performance on a simple facial emotion recognition task was analysed in a group of adolescents against their IQ and self-assessed competence of emotional perception and understanding. Method: Ability to recognize a total of eight emotional expressions was assessed by ad hoc devised 8-item photo-based instrument in three groups of higher secondary school students: typically developing (TD), n=95; borderline IQ (B), n=44; mildly intellectually disturbed (MID), n=60. Results: Reliability was observed to be α=.68 based on the overall sample. The instrument discriminated between groups (F(2,196)=23.06, p<.001, η2=.19) and emotions; recognition accuracy rates were higher for happiness (TD, 98.9%; B, 86.4%; MID, 73.3%) compared to other emotions and for six basic emotions (M=0.64, SD=0.26) compared to additional two (M=0.30, SD=0.38). Apart from moderate correlation with IQm in MID group (r(58)=.32, p=.01), no other correlations to IQ scores were established. Regression model consisting of both IQ scores explained 11.3% of the variation in basic emotion recognition in combined sample of B+MID groups (F(2,101)=7.54, p=.001, adjusted R2=.113), but only IQm proved to be significant predictor (β=.27, p=.008). There was no congruence of ability to recognize emotions from facial expressions with self-assessed competence to perceive and understand emotions measured by cross-culturally validated scale (1). Discussion: However scarce, our data fit well into evidence on basic emotion recognition in intellectually disturbed and typical population (2,3). Despite the issue of reliability of such a plain measure, discriminative efficacy of facial emotions as single-stimuli objects appeared to be decent. The lack of agreement with the selfassessed ability of emotional perception speaks once more against breezy mixing of self-assessment and performance measures of joined constructs. Conclusions: Facial emotion recognition continues to be clear and sound cue to emotional processing even when assessed with the simplest of possible tasks.
Krstić et al. (Sun,) studied this question.