Relationship between emotion comprehension, vocabulary, and verbal working memory in intellectual developmental disorders: involvement of verbal reasoning skills

This study investigated the role of language-related abilities in emotion comprehension among young people with non-specific intellectual developmental disorders (NS-IDDs). Forty children and adolescents with NS-IDDs completed tasks assessing emotion comprehension, receptive vocabulary, verbal reasoning skills, and verbal working memory. Results showed that emotion comprehension was better predicted by comprehension of abstract words and verbal working memory, and that these two predictors were themselves predicted by verbal reasoning skills. These results therefore suggest a link between emotion understanding and verbal reasoning, which could be mediated by abstract vocabulary and verbal working memory. These findings provide insight into the relationships between emotion comprehension and language-related abilities in NS-IDDs.