Children's and adults' recognition of spontaneous and posed emotional expressions in young children.

Abstract

The present study investigated the degree to which young children can enact expressions of emotion recognizable by peers and adults; the study also examined whether accuracy of recognition was a function of age (4-5-year-old children vs. adult) and whether the expression was posed or spontaneous. Adults were much more accurate than children in recognizing neutral states, slightly more accurate in recognizing happiness and anger, and equally accurate in recognizing sadness. Children's spontaneous displays of happiness were more recognizable than posed displays, but for other emotions there was no difference between the recognizability of posed and spontaneous expressions. Children and adults had high base rates for using the label happy, and children had higher base rates than adults for the label sad but much lower ones for the label neutral. The high base rates for the label happy tended to increase accuracy in recognizing happy expressions, and children's higher base rates for sad increased their accuracy in recognizing that state. Low base rates for anger and neutral labels hindered accuracy in recognizing those states in both children and adults. Sex and ethnicity of the child whose emotion was displayed interacted to influence only adults' recognizability of anger. The results are discussed in terms of the social learning and cognitive ' developmental factors influencing (a) adults' and children's decoding (recognition) of emotional expressions in young children and (b) encoding (posing) of emotional expressions by young children. Despite a long history of study, several ba- To examine either of these issues carefully, sic issues regarding facial expressive behavior a set of stimuli depicting children's spontahave yet to be resolved. Children's ability to neous expressions of emotion is required, recognize their peers' facial displays of emo- and few studies have employed pictorial rection remains essentially unexamined. This is ords of children's spontaneous emotional dissurprising, since the ability to recognize the plays as stimuli. Buck (1975) videotaped chilaffective experiences of peers is an important dren's facial expressions while they viewed prerequisite for successful social adaptation affect-inducing slides; he also obtained posed (Gates, 1923; Gilbert, 1969; Shantz, 1975). expressions by instructing children to role Another neglected issue is the degree to play different affective states. Feinman and which young children can intentionally pro- Feldman (1982) employed Buck's slides and duce facial expressions of emotion so that found that preschoolers' posed expressions they can, for example, intentionally display were more recognizable than their spontaemotibn that they are—or are not—experi- neous productions. Children's posed displays encing. of happiness (84%) and sadness (56%) were decoded by unfamiliar adults at levels significantly better than chance. But for sponThis research was supported by National Science taneous expressions, only happiness was deFoundation Grants BNS 78-09108 and BNS 79-21027 cocje(j significantly better than chance (50%),