Psychometric properties and preliminary norms of the penn facial discrimination task in adults with mental retardation

The Penn Facial Discrimination Task (PFDT) is an emotion recognition instrument consisting of a series of monochrome facial photographs of adults (Erwin et al, 1992). In addition to the emotion task the PFDT also has a control task, in which the subject has to estimate the approximate age of the depicted person. In previous studies, the PFDT has been shown to be a valid instrument for subjects with psychiatric disorders, and it has also generated useful results in populations with mental retardation. This study was designed to explore the applicability of the PFDT in subjects with borderline cognitive functioning and mental retardation (N = 105; les ranging from 23 to 81). Data were analyzed to generate preliminary normative data for different subgroups of adults with mental retardation (sex, IQ-levels, and lateral dominance). In addition, item analyses were conducted and psychometric properties including retest reliability, internal consistency, item-subscale correlations, concurrent validity, and content validity were examined. The PI;DT was found to be a feasible experimental task for emotion recognition research in groups of subjects with mental retardation.