Children's Sensitivity to Facial Emotional Expressions: The Mediating Roles of Maternal Warmth and Home Environment

TY - JOUR

T1 - Children's Sensitivity to Facial Emotional Expressions

T2 - The Mediating Roles of Maternal Warmth and Home Environment

AU - Milojevich, Helen M.

AU - Dickerson, Kelli L.

AU - Arseneault, Louise

AU - Caspi, Avshalom

AU - Kim-Cohen, Julia

AU - Danese, Andrea

AU - Moffitt, Terrie E.

AU - Odgers, Candice L.

N1 - Publisher Copyright: © 2025 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

PY - 2025/11

Y1 - 2025/11

N2 - Children’s ability to recognize emotions in the facial expressions of others is critical for their social functioning and self-regulation. Children exposed to adversity often show differences in their ability to recognize emotions. However, most prior research has relied on clinical or high-risk samples and focused on exposure to extreme forms of adversity, such as child maltreatment or serious deprivation. The present study utilized data from the Environmental Risk (E-Risk) Longitudinal Twin Study, an epidemiological cohort of 2,232 British twins, to test whether (1) children growing up in households with lower versus higher socioeconomic status (SES) are less sensitive in their identification of emotions, controlling for child IQ and sex, and, if so, (2) differences in parenting and household environment (maternal warmth, negative parenting, orderly homes, polyvictimization, or maternal depression) across lower versus higher SES households explains these differences. Results indicated that children living in higher versus lower-income households were more sensitive in identifying a range of facial emotions, even after accounting for child IQ and sex. Maternal warmth and the state of the children’s homes, but not other factors, mediated this association. Additional within-family analyses showed that children whose mothers expressed more warmth when describing them as compared to their same-sex twin were also more sensitive to the recognition of negative emotions than their sibling. Future research is needed to test whether enhanced maternal warmth or home environments can lead to improved emotion recognition among children.

AB - Children’s ability to recognize emotions in the facial expressions of others is critical for their social functioning and self-regulation. Children exposed to adversity often show differences in their ability to recognize emotions. However, most prior research has relied on clinical or high-risk samples and focused on exposure to extreme forms of adversity, such as child maltreatment or serious deprivation. The present study utilized data from the Environmental Risk (E-Risk) Longitudinal Twin Study, an epidemiological cohort of 2,232 British twins, to test whether (1) children growing up in households with lower versus higher socioeconomic status (SES) are less sensitive in their identification of emotions, controlling for child IQ and sex, and, if so, (2) differences in parenting and household environment (maternal warmth, negative parenting, orderly homes, polyvictimization, or maternal depression) across lower versus higher SES households explains these differences. Results indicated that children living in higher versus lower-income households were more sensitive in identifying a range of facial emotions, even after accounting for child IQ and sex. Maternal warmth and the state of the children’s homes, but not other factors, mediated this association. Additional within-family analyses showed that children whose mothers expressed more warmth when describing them as compared to their same-sex twin were also more sensitive to the recognition of negative emotions than their sibling. Future research is needed to test whether enhanced maternal warmth or home environments can lead to improved emotion recognition among children.

KW - adversity

KW - children

KW - emotion recognition

KW - parenting

KW - socioeconomic status

UR - https://www.scopus.com/pages/publications/105017945116

U2 - 10.1111/desc.70077

DO - 10.1111/desc.70077

M3 - Article

C2 - 41058470

AN - SCOPUS:105017945116

SN - 1363-755X

VL - 28

JO - Developmental Science

JF - Developmental Science

IS - 6

M1 - e70077

ER -