Social cognition in children and adolescents with epilepsy: a meta-analysis

Review question / Objective: To our knowledge, no meta-analysis has summarized social cognitive performance in children and adolescents with epilepsy as independent groups. Therefore, we conducted this meta-analysis to examine differences between children and adolescents with epilepsy and HCs in terms of ToM and FER performance. Condition being studied: Epilepsy is characterized by chronic, unprovoked and recurrent seizures, is the most frequent neurological disease in childhood and usually occurs in early development. Worldwide, it is estimated that approximately 50 million people suffer from the pain of epileptic seizures, with more than half of the cases beginning in childhood and adolescence. So a comprehensive understanding of children and adolescence with epilepsy has become the focus of widespread attention. Recently, a number of studies have assessed ToM or facial emotion recognition deficits in children and adolescents with epilepsy, but the conclusions are inconsistent. These inconsistent findings might be related to the small sample sizes in most studies. Additionally, the methods used to evaluate ToM or facial emotion recognition performance were varied across studies. A meta-analysis can increase statistical power, estimate the severity of these deficits, and help resolve conflicting findings.