Abstract
BackgroundThe paper explored emotion comprehension in children with regard to facial expression of emotion. The effect of valence and arousal evaluation, of context and of psychophysiological measures was monitored. Indeed subjective evaluation of valence (positive vs. negative) and arousal (high vs. low), and contextual (facial expression vs. facial expression and script) variables were supposed to modulate the psychophysiological responses.MethodsSelf-report measures (in terms of correct recognition, arousal and valence attribution) and psychophysiological correlates (facial electromyography, EMG, skin conductance response, SCR, and heart rate, HR) were observed when children (N = 26; mean age = 8.75 y; range 6-11 y) looked at six facial expressions of emotions (happiness, anger, fear, sadness, surprise, and disgust) and six emotional scripts (contextualized facial expressions). The competencies about the recognition, the evaluation on valence and arousal was tested in concomitance with psychophysiological variations. Specifically, we tested for the congruence of these multiple measures.ResultsLog-linear analysis and repeated measure ANOVAs showed different representations across the subjects, as a function of emotion. Specifically, children’ recognition and attribution were well developed for some emotions (such as anger, fear, surprise and happiness), whereas some other emotions (mainly disgust and sadness) were less clearly represented. SCR, HR and EMG measures were modulated by the evaluation based on valence and arousal, with increased psychophysiological values mainly in response to anger, fear and happiness.ConclusionsAs shown by multiple regression analysis, a significant consonance was found between self-report measures and psychophysiological behavior, mainly for emotions rated as more arousing and negative in valence. The multilevel measures were discussed at light of dimensional attribution model.
Highlights
In the last two decades, developmental psychology has seen an increasing interest in the study of emotion comprehension
The most important of them are the two dimensional axes of the hedonic value and the arousal level. This model was tested by some empirical studies which found that firstly children interpret facial expressions in terms of pleasure-displeasure and intensity
To verify the type of categorization applied to the emotional domain, affective responses organized around the arousal and valence dimension include subjective experience, often measured using self-report responses to affective stimuli
Summary
In the last two decades, developmental psychology has seen an increasing interest in the study of emotion comprehension. Emotional face recognition and understanding represent a primary social competence, because they contribute to social interactions and social management [1] These competencies are related to general cognitive functions and it was shown that language was the most important predictor of nonverbal emotion recognition ability [2]. The most important of them are the two dimensional axes of the hedonic value and the arousal level This model was tested by some empirical studies which found that firstly children interpret facial expressions in terms of pleasure-displeasure (bipolar hedonic value) and intensity (arousal level). Successively they use more articulated and wider conceptual categories [5,6]. Subjective evaluation of valence (positive vs. negative) and arousal (high vs. low), and contextual (facial expression vs. facial expression and script) variables were supposed to modulate the psychophysiological responses
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