Letizia Della Longa 1, Chiara Nosarti 2, Teresa Farroni 1 1 Developmental Psychology and Socialization Department, University of Padova, Italy 2 Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, King’s College London, UK
Preterm children are at risk for the emergence of early cognitive and emotional difficulties, which may lead to behavioral and psychiatric problems across adulthood. Accurate decoding of emotional signals from faces represents an essential prerequisite for socio-affective development and the formation of social bounds. This study aims to examine possible differences between preterm and full-term children in the ability to discriminate emotional facial expressions, investigating possible relationships between perceptual emotional processing and socio-emotional functioning during everyday activities. 55 school-age children (N=34 preterm, N=21 full-term) were presented with a cognitive assessment that ensured comparable cognitive abilities between the two groups (Raven’s Progressive Matrices, Digit Span, Attention Network Task, Berg Card Sorting Test). Moreover, children were asked to identify emotional expressions from pictures of peer’s faces (Emotion Recognition Task). Finally, children’s socio-emotional and behavioral functioning was evaluated by using parent-reported questionnaires (Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire, Emotion Regulation Checklist, Temperament in Middle Childhood Questionnaire, Behavioral Rating Inventory of Executive Function). The results revealed that preterm children were less accurate than full-term children in detecting emotional expressions, in particular in the case of positive emotions, and they showed an increased risk for social and behavioral problems. Notably, correlational analyses indicated a relationship between the ability to recognize emotional expressions and socio-emotional functioning. The present study points out that preterm children present a specific vulnerability in decoding emotional signals from faces, which may be critically link to emotional and behavioral regulation problems with cascading effects on the development of social skills and effective interpersonal interactions.
