Recognition of Basic Emotions Through Facial Expressions in Children with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder.

Introduction: Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is a neurodevelopmental disorder that affects attentional and executive functions, which may interfere with facial emotion recognition. This study explored the recognition of basic and complex emotions in pediatric subjects with ADHD.

Method: This was a prospective, cross-sectional, controlled study. A total of 60 participants were included, divided into two groups: the ADHD Group (n = 30) and the Control Group (n = 30) with neurotypical development. Each participant was presented with a series of photographs and video clips of children and adults and was asked to identify the emotion expressed on the face.

Results: No significant differences were found in the recognition of basic emotions between the Control Group (M = 44.43; SD = 2.01) and the ADHD Group (M = 43.90; SD = 2.14; t(58) = -0.995; p = 0.324), nor in the recognition of complex emotions [t(58) = 0.514; p = 0.609]. No differences were found by age [Z = 463; p = 0.843] or by sex (p = 0.92). We observed significantly better performance with a large effect size when recognizing child faces (M = 29.56; 95% CI 28.98-30.14) compared with adult faces (M = 14.86; 95% CI 14.46-15.26; p < 0.001; d = 11.03), with performance on adult faces improving with age (rho = 0.39; p = 0.03).

Conclusion: The ADHD Group did not show differential performance compared with the neurotypical group in emotion recognition. Performance significantly improved for child faces, suggesting that adult faces should be avoided when assessing this population. Recognition of adult faces improved with age.