Early language competence, but not general cognitive ability, predicts children's recognition of emotion from facial and vocal cues.

The ability to accurately identify and label emotions in the self and others is crucial for successful social interactions and good mental health. In the current study we tested the longitudinal relationship between early language skills and recognition of facial and vocal emotion cues in a representative UK population cohort with diverse language and cognitive skills ( = 369), including a large sample of children that met criteria for Developmental Language Disorder (DLD,  = 97). Language skills, but not non-verbal cognitive ability, at age 5-6 predicted emotion recognition at age 10-12.