What do error patterns in processing facial expressions, social interaction scenes and vocal prosody tell us about the way social cognition works in children with 22q11.2DS?

Impairments in social cognition have been frequently described in 22q11.2 deletion syndrome (22q11.2DS) and are thought to be a hallmark of difficulties in social interactions. The present study addresses aspects that are critical for everyday social cognitive functioning but have received little attention so far. Sixteen children with 22q11.2DS and 22 controls completed 1 task of facial expression recognition, 1 task of attribution of facial expressions to faceless characters involved in visually presented social interactions, and 1 task of attribution of facial expressions to characters involved in aurally presented dialogues. All three tasks have in common to involve processing of emotions. All participants also completed two tasks of attention and two tasks of visual spatial perception, and their parents completed some scales regarding behavioural problems of their children. Patients performed worse than controls in all three tasks of emotion processing, and even worse in the second and third tasks. However, they performed above chance level in all three tasks, and the results were independent of IQ, age and gender. The analysis of error patterns suggests that patients tend to coarsely categorize situations as either attractive or repulsive and also that they have difficulties in differentiating emotions that are associated with threats. An isolated association between the tasks of emotion and behaviour was found, showing that the more frequently patients with 22q11.2DS perceive happiness where there is not, the less they exhibit aggressive behaviour.