Recognition of facial expressions by socially and emotionally disturbed children

Twenty-two children, 18 boys and 4 girls, classified as socially and emotionally disturbed (SED) were compared with 19 children, 6 boys and 13 girls, without social and emotional disturbances on their ability to match pictures depicting six basic emotions (as identified by Ekman and Friesen, 1975) which were accompanied by a story about that emotion. The children were matched by chronological age ranging from 8.1 to 12.4 years of age. A difference between the two groups was noted and was significant at the .04 level for a one-tailed test. A Tukey test of pairwise comparisons was also performed and a strong difference between happy and sad was noted for the partial-hospitalization SED group. The normal group showed a difference among many of the emotions. The results of this study support research showing a significant difference between normal children and those with various mental handicaps in their ability to correctly recognize six basic facial expressions