Emotional face expressions recognition in childhood: developmental markers, age and sex effect.

Abstract

Recognizing emotional face expressions in others is a valuable non-verbal communication and particularly relevant throughout childhood given that children's language skills are not yet fully developed, but the first interactions with peers have just started. This study aims to investigate developmental markers of emotional facial expression in children and the effect of age and sex on it. A total of 90 children split into three age groups: 6-7years old (n = 30); 8-9years old (n = 30); 10-11years old (n = 30) took part in the study. Participants were exposed to 38 photos in two exposure times (500ms and 1000ms) of children expressing happiness, sadness, anger, disgust, fear and surprise on three intensities, plus images of neutral faces. Happiness was the easiest expression to be recognized, followed by disgust and surprise. As expected, 10-11-year-old group showed the highest accuracy means, whereas 6-7-year-old group had the lowest means of accuracy. Data support the non-existence of female advantage.