Decoding of emotional expressions in children and adolescents

The aim of this study was to assess whether different kinds of emotions are decoded in different ways during ontogeny. 151 normal subjects (80 boys; 71 girls) aged 8 to 16 were recruited in primary, secondary (middle), and high schools and 46 slides (3 male; 3 female) from Picture of Facial Affect showing six basic emotions were stimuli. Analysis showed that boys and girls in all age groups did not differ in decoding facial expression; happiness and disgust had the highest percentage scores in all age groups, 99% and 94%, respectively, while sadness and fear had the lowest percentage scores, 69% and 55%, respectively. This was possibly due to the intrinsic unpleasantness of those emotions for children. Competence in discrimination of sadness, fear, and surprise changed across age groups, but this growing competence did not show a linear trend and was not similar for all emotions.