In three studies, children with Down syndrome were presented with emotion r
ecognition tasks designed to tap their knowledge of simple emotions, their
ability to label emotions, and their understanding of emotions from simple,
story-based contexts. Results indicate that young children with Down syndr
ome perform similarly to typical controls matched on MAs of approximately 3
years. However, by developmental age of 4 years, children with Down syndro
me performed worse than both MA-matched typical children and children with
non-Down syndrome types of mental retardation. Although the MAs of children
with Down syndrome increased over 2-years, their emotion recognition abili
ties did not. Taken together, findings suggest both etiological and develop
mental differences in the emotion recognition abilities of children with Do
wn syndrome.