Abstract
We test whether there is an own-age advantage in emotion recognition using prototypical younger child, older child and adult faces displaying emotional expressions. Prototypes were created by averaging photographs of individuals from 6 different age and sex categories (male 5–8 years, male 9–12 years, female 5–8 years, female 9–12 years, adult male and adult female), each posing 6 basic emotional expressions. In the study 5–8 year old children (n = 33), 9–13 year old children (n = 70) and adults (n = 92) labelled these expression prototypes in a 6-alternative forced-choice task. There was no evidence that children or adults recognised expressions better on faces from their own age group. Instead, child facial expression prototypes were recognised as accurately as adult expression prototypes by all age groups. This suggests there is no substantial own-age advantage in children’s emotion recognition.
Highlights
The ability to recognise emotions in other people from their facial expressions is an important skill for social development [1]
When comparing different age groups on emotion recognition performance, most studies have used adult faces, failing to take in to account the effect this may have on the performance of children, who obviously do not belong to this age category
No previous studies have looked at whether there is an ownage bias in children’s emotion recognition. To fill this gap we aimed to look for evidence of an own-age bias in children’s emotion recognition using stimuli with prototypical children’s facial expressions
Summary
The ability to recognise emotions in other people from their facial expressions is an important skill for social development [1]. It has been found that children do not reach adult levels of performance on emotion recognition tasks until late adolescence [1, 2]. When comparing different age groups on emotion recognition performance, most studies have used adult faces, failing to take in to account the effect this may have on the performance of children, who obviously do not belong to this age category. In studies of face recognition, participants are more accurate at recognising faces of individuals belonging to their own cultural group [3] and at recognising faces of individuals belonging to their own agegroup [4, 5]. There is some evidence that people find it easier to recognise emotional expressions on faces of individuals belonging to their in-group. In a meta-analysis Elfenbein and Ambady (6) concluded that expression recognition is more accurate when the perceiver and the expresser are members of the same cultural group
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
