Perceiving Facial and Vocal Expressions of Emotion in Individuals With Williams Syndrome

Abstract

People with Williams syndrome are extremely sociable, empathic, and expressive in communication. Some researchers suggest they may be especially sensitive to perceiving emotional expressions. We administered the Faces and Paralanguage subtests of the Diagnostic Analysis of Nonverbal Accuracy Scale (DANVA2), a standardized measure of emotion recognition for basic emotions to three groups: adolescents and adults with Williams syndrome, age and IQ-matched participants with learning/intellectual disability, and age-matched nonimpaired controls. The Williams syndrome and learning/intellectual disability groups performed significantly worse than the typically developing controls on both subtests, especially on negative emotions. Error analysis indicated the same general pattern of performance across versions and subtests of the DANVA2 for all groups. These findings suggest that emotion recognition is not spared in Williams syndrome.

Linking social behaviour and anxiety to attention to emotional faces in Williams syndrome

“…Studies that have employed eye tracking techniques have provided evidence that individuals with WS demonstrate a reduced ability to disengage attention from the eye region of a face when compared to mental-age (MA) matched controls Riby & Hancock, 2009). In addition, emotional expressions of faces have been shown to influence attention allocation, with positive (happy) emotions yielding greater visual attention than negative emotions (fearful, angry) in faces (Dodd & Porter, 2010;Plesa-Skwerer, Faja, Schofield, Verbalis, & Tager-Flusberg, 2006;Santos, Silva, Rosset, & Deruelle, 2010). The findings of atypical attention to positive emotional faces, specifically the eye region of faces in WS, are consistent with previous evidence of the role of the amygdala in directing visual attention (Gamer & Buechel, 2009;Gamer, Zurowski, & Buechel, 2010).…”

Looking and thinking: How individuals with Williams syndrome make judgements about mental states

“…This prolonged attention to faces has been observed in both toddlers with the disorder (Mervis et al, 2003) and has been shown experimentally with older individuals who have WS using eye tracking (Riby & Hancock, 2008). This prolonged attention to a person's face does not, however, lead to an increase or heightened proficiency at interpreting information from that face, such as cues as to how the person is feeling (Plesa-Skwerer, Faja, Schofield, Verbalis, & Tager-Flusberg, 2006a) or where they might be attending (Riby, Hancock, Jones & Hanley, 2013). This is particularly important, as increased drive for social interaction (Jones et al, 2000), a lack of understanding of the dangers associated with interactions with unfamiliar people (e.g.…”

“…Participants with WS generally recognised mental states at the level expected by their verbal ability, which was poorer than expected from their CA (Plesa Skwerer et al, 2006a). However, they had some specific difficulties.…”

“…Several studies have provided evidence to show that individuals with WS perform at a level expected for their mental age (but not as accurately as expected by chronological age) when recognising basic expressions of emotion (see various studies, Karmiloff-Smith et al, 1995;Gagliardi, Figerio, Burt, Cazzaniga, Perrett, & Borgatti, 2003;Plesa Skwerer et al, 2006a;Porter et al, 2010). For example, Plesa Skwerer et al (2006a) compared the emotion recognition abilities of 47 individuals with WS to individuals with a learning disability (LD) and TD individuals. Participants were shown static images of basic emotions (happy, sad, angry, fearful) and both the WS and LD groups were significantly less accurate for recognition than the TD group.…”

Exploring different explanations for performance on a theory of mind task in Williams syndrome and autism using eye movements

“…This has led researchers to conclude that the social profile in WS might be uneven as well with the social perceptual components being intact but the socio-perceptual component being impaired (Tager-Flusberg and Sullivan 2000). However, more recent studies have found that participants with WS also show difficulties on tasks that tap into socio-perceptual abilities (for example Plesa-Skwerer et al 2006).…”