Understanding emotions in context: the effects of language impairment on children's ability to infer emotional reactions

Background: Research indicates children with language impairment (LI) may experience social deficits extending beyond those expected due to their language deficits. In particular, it has been found that children with LI have difficulty with various aspects of emotional competence. One aspect of emotional competence is emotion understanding, which includes the ability to infer the emotions of oneself and others from social context. Aims: To examine the ability of children with LI to infer the emotions elicited by specific social situations. Methods & Procedures: Participants were presented with short scenarios in which the main character, Chris, was exposed to a situation that would be expected to elicit anger, fear, happiness or sadness. Children were then asked to indicate what emotion Chris experienced. Following selected scenarios, children were asked to talk about the emotions they associated with some of the scenarios. They were first asked why the character would feel a particular emotion ( e. g. Why did Chris feel happy?) and then asked for a description of how the particular emotion would feel ( e. g. How does it feel inside to be happy?). Outcomes & Results: Both groups of children identified happiness most accurately, followed by sadness, fear and anger. Older children were significantly more accurate than younger children, and typically developing children were significantly more accurate than children with LI. Children with LI were less sophisticated in their descriptions of emotion than were typical children. Conclusions: It is suggested that clinical interventions for children with LI should include activities designed to enrich children's emotion understanding, giving them opportunities to develop skills they may not acquire otherwise.