Effect of Short-Term Micro-expression Training on the Micro-expression Recognition Performance of Preschool Children

Abstract

Micro-expressions are facial expressions that are characterized by short durations, involuntary generation and low intensity, and they are regarded as unique cues revealing one’s hidden emotions. Numerous researchers have studied the recognition of micro-expression, mainly focused on the recognition ability of college students or adults. However, researches from the perspective of child development are almost scanty considering the great significance of the development of expression recognition ability. To further facilitate development in this field, the present paper firstly aim to study the preschoolers’ micro-expression recognition ability. Besides, the authors are also interested in the effect of micro-expression recognition training, whether micro-expression training can improve children’s ability to recognize different emotion types of micro-expression. Results suggest that 5-years-old children’s recognition accuracy was relatively low as 0.38. However, after a short term training through micro-expression training tool, the micro-expression recognition accuracy in post-test increased to 0.54, which was significantly higher than pre-test. No gender difference on micro-expression recognition was found. These findings extend our understandings of human’s micro-expression recognition from the perspective of child development.