title: Reading emotions after childhood brain injury: case series evidence of dissociation between cognitive abilities and emotional expression processing skills.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  A previous study has shown that children with brain injuries are worse than their same age peers at reading emotions. It has not clearly been established that cognitive impairments and emotion processing impairments are dissociable in children and the question of whether emotion-reading skills can be selectively impaired in children after brain injury is explored here.
  
  
  METHODS
  This study addresses this issue by testing a case series of seven children with brain injuries, who were identified as experiencing emotional or behavioural difficulties, according to a social-behavioural measure.
  
  
  METHODS
  A battery of tests of cognitive function and measures that assess ability in reading emotions from faces, voices and eyes was administered to each child.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Some cases demonstrate broadly based deficits that affect both cognitive and emotion processing domains, whilst other cases demonstrate highly selective deficits in reading emotions.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Based on the profile of results across the cases, this study reports that modality-specific, selective impairments in reading emotional expression can be found in children after brain injury. In addition, the data provide evidence of dissociation between cognitive abilities and emotional expression processing.
authors: School of Psychology, University of Exeter, Exeter, UK. j.tonks@exeter.ac.uk
authors: James
authors: J
authors: Tonks
authors: W Huw
authors: WH
authors: Williams
authors: Ian
authors: I
authors: Frampton
authors: Phil
authors: P
authors: Yates
authors: Sarah E
authors: SE
authors: Wall
authors: Alan
authors: A
authors: Slater
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D001930:Brain Injuries / Q000523:psychology*; D002648:Child; D003071:Cognition / Q000502:physiology; D004644:Emotions; D005149:Facial Expression; D006801:Humans; D009633:Nonverbal Communication; D010468:Perceptual Disorders / Q000523:psychology*; D011581:Psychological Tests