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Emotion Recognition in Children with ADHD
It is well established that children with ADHD often have difficulty in their peer relationships. One reason for this is that the hyperactive/impulsive and/or spacey behavior that frustrates parents and teachers can also be alienating to peers. Children with ADHD can also have difficulty attending to, or accurately reading, social cues. This latter difficulty is the topic of an interesting study that appeared in the April 1998 issue of Behavior Modification.
The authors of this study were interested in testing how well children and adolescents with ADHD were able to identify the emotions conveyed by others. This is an important component of effective social functioning because consistently misreading others’ emotions can lead to behavior that seems inappropriate. For example, a child who does not recognize that his friend feels sad would be unlikely to provide the kind of empathic and supportive response his friend might desire. Overtime, consistently misreading the friend’s emotions could have important negative repercussions on the friendship.
In this study, 50 children and adolescents with ADHD were shown photographs of faces portraying a different basic emotion, and stories portraying those emotions were read to them. After each story, the subject was asked to point to the photograph that depicted the emotion described.
Compared to results that have been previously reported for children without ADHD, the subjects with ADHD were less accurate in identifying the correct emotion, suggesting that children with ADHD are less competent at identifying emotions in others. (It would have been better if a control group of children without ADHD was used in the current study, rather than just comparing the results of the subjects with those obtained from non ADHD children in earlier studies.) What are the clinical implications of these results? First, it is important to stress that not every child with ADHD would be expected to have this difficulty. Thus, the first step would be to think whether your child has difficulty reading others’ emotions. If so, and if this sometimes results in inappropriate behavior, it may be a skill that you want to work on with your child.
There are several ways you could do this. You could start by simply talking about the different feelings people have, the things that make people feel different ways, and how to tell what another person is feeling. This kind of talking can increase a child’s attention to, and knowledge of, people’s emotions. Looking at books or magazines that have pictures of different people, talking about what the people might be feeling, and discussing how you can tell this may also enhance your child’s skill at emotion recognition. It would be important to present this as a fun thing to do rather than as a remedial exercise, and this really can be a fun way to spend time with your child. Of course, if you think that your child has real difficulty in this area, than speaking directly with a mental health professional about ways to address this problem would also be recommended.
Note: This article originally appeared in Attention Research Update, an online newsletter written by Dr. David Rabiner, a Duke University psychologist and former member of CHADD's Professional Advisory Board. You can learn more about Attention Research Update and sign up for a free subscription at www.helpforadd.com.