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Poster #216 - Shared Environment Effects on Children's Emotion Recognition

Fri, March 22, 12:45 to 2:00pm, Baltimore Convention Center, Floor: Level 1, Exhibit Hall B

Integrative Statement

Emotion recognition (ER) is the ability to understand and recognize others’ emotions using cues such as facial expressions and tone of voice. The ability to recognize emotions is crucial for social interaction by providing information about partners’ reactions, intentions and likely behaviors. Little is known about how this ability develops throughout childhood, and specifically the background for individual differences. Previous studies that examined the genetic and environmental influences on empathy have found a meaningful genetic influence and some evidence for shared environment effects. The present study examined genetic and environmental influences on children’s ER via facial and vocal cues in 344 7-year- old (M= 89.59; SD= 3.83 in months) twin children (59 MZ pairs and 113 same-sex DZ pairs), who were part of the Longitudinal Israeli Study of Twins. ER was assessed with the child version of the Diagnostic Assessment of Nonverbal Accuracy (DANVA2, Nowicki, 2010). Twin correlations were not higher for MZ twins than for DZ twins, indicating no heritability for ER in this population. In contrast, correlations were positive for both types of twins, and somewhat higher for DZ twins, indicating a shared environmental effect, for both facial and vocal cues of emotion. Accordingly, the models showed no genetic (A) effect but did show shared-environment (C) and non-shared environment (E) effects on ER (Table 1). This pattern was robust to controlling for twins being of the same sex and age. Similarly, although there were modest correlations between ER and demographic variables such as family income and number of additional siblings, these variables did not account for the shared environment effects observed. A bivariate genetic analysis found a shared environmental correlation between facial and vocal ER (rc=.63), indicating that the shared environmental factors contributing to vocal and facial ER overlap. In contrast with previous studies, our results offer the surprising possibility that not all emotional competences are equally heritable .It is possible that the genetic element influences ER differently at different ages. It is important to conduct a follow-up study that examines the genetic and environmental impact on ER longitudinally from preschool to adolescence. The study highlights the importance of the shared environment to children's ER. The current study is an important contribution to the research field, which investigates the effects of genetics and the environment on children's emotional development. It also contributes to the field of education, as the importance of the environment suggests the ability of intervention programs to improve children’s emotional abilities.

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