How Children Recognize Emotions from Video and Audio

The paper presents the results of assessing the ability of children from different groups - typical development (TD), autism spectrum disorder (ASD), and intellectual disability (ID) - to recognize the emotions of other people using video and audio tests. The study included 225 children aged 5 to 16 years and 2 adults. We used the original dataset by the Child's Emotional Development Method (CEDM), selecting from dataset the video recordings of four test tasks performed by children to recognize emotions from photographs of children, photographs of adults, abstract images, and the speech and voice of children (audio test). Children's ability to recognize emotions correctly was assessed in two ways: by experts' ratings on a Likert scale and by children's correct answers. The results showed greater accuracy in recognizing emotional states by TD children compared to children with ASD and ID. Peculiarities of recognition by children with ASD and ID of various emotions using video and audio tests were revealed. The novelty of the results lies in the comparative data on the recognition of emotions by TD children and children with various developmental disorders. The problem of assessing children's emotion recognition using a standardized approach for further use of data in creating applications that teach children to express and recognize emotions is original and new.