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Impact of familiarity upon children's developing facial expression recognition
Catherine M Herba1, Philip Benson, Sabine Landau
1Department of Psychological Medicine, Institute of Psychiatry, KCL, London, UK. c.herba@erasmusmc.nl
Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, and Allied Disciplines
|December 21, 2007
Summary
Children
Area of Science:
- Developmental Psychology
- Cognitive Neuroscience
- Social Psychology
Background:
- The role of personal familiarity in children's emotion processing is understudied.
- Familiar individuals are emotionally salient and frequently encountered by children.
- Research has largely overlooked familiarity's impact on facial expression recognition (FER).
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate how personal familiarity influences the development of facial expression recognition (FER) in children.
- To determine if familiarity affects the recognition of specific emotions differently.
Main Methods:
- 153 children aged 4-15 years participated.
- Dynamic facial expressions of happy, sad, angry, fearful, and disgusted emotions were used.
- Expressions were posed by both familiar (parents, teachers) and unfamiliar individuals.
Main Results:
- Recognition accuracy for sad and fear expressions improved with age.
- Children recognized happiness and fear at lower intensities.
- Familiarity negatively impacted the recognition of anger, fear, and disgust, but not sadness.
- Children were less accurate recognizing negative emotions from familiar individuals compared to strangers.
Conclusions:
- Personal familiarity may distract children, impairing their facial expression recognition.
- Future research on FER development must consider emotion type and familiarity.
- Findings have implications for understanding children's social-emotional development and potential clinical interventions.
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