Young children's ability to conserve facial identity when facial emotion varies

Children, ages three to five, judged which of three photographs of unfamiliar adult female faces was a picture of the same person shown in a target photograph. The three photographs depicted facial expressions of negative emotion, and the target photographs depicted negative or positive emotion. Children performed above chance levels at age three years (p less than .0001), and accuracy increased significantly with age (p less than .0001) from 50 percent at age three to 83 percent at age five. The three-year-olds were significantly less accurate than either older group (p less than .05), but the four- and five-year-olds did not differ. Optimal performance scores from the present study and a previous study (Gorman, 1978) showed that no child achieved mastery at age three; approximately one-third of the children demonstrated mastery at age four; a rapid rise in mastery was seen around age five or older; and the full cohort demonstrated mastery by age seven. Error patterns for three-year-olds were based on mouth configuration cues, and for five-year-olds on emotion similarity.