<i>Objective:</i> To study face and emotion recognition in children with mostly expressive specific language impairment (SLI-E). <i>Subjects and Methods:</i> A test movie to study perception and recognition of faces and mimic-gestural expression was applied to 24 children diagnosed as suffering from SLI-E and an age-matched control group of normally developing children. <i>Results:</i> Compared to a normal control group, the SLI-E children scored significantly worse in both the face and expression recognition tasks with a preponderant effect on emotion recognition. The performance of the SLI-E group could not be explained by reduced attention during the test session. <i>Conclusion:</i> We conclude that SLI-E is associated with a deficiency in decoding non-verbal emotional facial and gestural information, which might lead to profound and persistent problems in social interaction and development.

Twin, family and adoption studies have led to a solid understanding of the contribution of both genetic and environmental factors to the development of attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). We review recent studies under consideration of both methodological aspects and relevant findings. Heritability estimates in the range of 0.6 - 0.8 surpass those for most other child and adolescent psychiatric disorders. First degree relatives have elevated rates for ADHD, affective disorders, conduct disorders and substance abuse and dependency. The ADHD subtype of the index patient does not predict the subtype of other family members affected with ADHD; hence non-genetic factors seemingly account for this intrafamilial variability. Because the familial rates for ADHD are not higher in families of female in comparison to male index patients, there is no indication that the genetic loading is higher in affected females. Recently, rater effects have been discussed broadly: Whereas the heritability estimates are uniformly high independent of the informant (mother, father, teacher), the correlations between quantitatively rated symptoms are low between different informants. Knowledge of the formal genetic aspects of ADHD is a prerequisite for understanding the results of recent molecular genetic studies.