Recognition and posing of emotional expressions by abused children and their mothers.

Abstract

Twenty abused and 20 nonabused pairs of children (3 to 7 years of age) and their mothers participatedin a facial expression posing task and a facial expression recognition task. The expressions producedby subjects were judged on emotion content by naive raters and were coded using Friesen and Ekman's(1984) Emotion Facial Action Coding System (EMFACS). Data analysis indicated that abusedchildren and their mothers pose less recognizable expressions than nonabused children and mothers.Although abused children were less accurate than nonabused children in recognizing emotionalexpressions, there was no difference in recognition accuracy between the two groups of mothers. Asignificant correlation between mothers' posing scores and children's recognition scores was alsoobtained. These results suggest that abused children may not observe easily interpreted voluntarydisplays of emotion by their mothers as often as nonabused children. This may partially explain thedifference in recognition (and production) abilities of abused and nonabused children.

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