Nine-Year-Old Children Use Norm-Based Coding to Visually Represent Facial Expression

Children are less skilled than adults at making judgments about facial expression. This could be because they have not yet developed adult-like mechanisms for visually representing faces. Adults are thought to represent faces in a multidimensional face-space, and have been shown to code the expressi...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of experimental psychology. Human perception and performance 2013-10, Vol.39 (5), p.1261-1269
Main Authors: BURTON, Nichola, JEFFERY, Linda, SKINNER, Andrew L, BENTON, Christopher P, RHODES, Gillian
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adaptation
Adaptation, Psychological - physiology
Adolescent
Adult
Adult children
Affectivity. Emotion
Age Factors
Biological and medical sciences
Child
Child development
Child Development - physiology
Childhood Development
Children
Children & youth
Coding
Developmental psychology
Experimental psychology
Face
Facial Expression
Facial Expressions
Female
Figural Aftereffect - physiology
Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology
Human
Humans
Judgment
Judgments
Male
Middle Aged
Models, Psychological
Pattern Recognition, Visual - physiology
Perception
Personality. Affectivity
Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry
Psychology. Psychophysiology
Social Perception
Vision
Young Adult
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Summary:Children are less skilled than adults at making judgments about facial expression. This could be because they have not yet developed adult-like mechanisms for visually representing faces. Adults are thought to represent faces in a multidimensional face-space, and have been shown to code the expression of a face relative to the norm or average face in face-space. Norm-based coding is economical and adaptive, and may be what makes adults more sensitive to facial expression than children. This study investigated the coding system that children use to represent facial expression. An adaptation aftereffect paradigm was used to test 24 adults and 18 children (9 years 2 months to 9 years 11 months old). Participants adapted to weak and strong antiexpressions. They then judged the expression of an average expression. Adaptation created aftereffects that made the test face look like the expression opposite that of the adaptor. Consistent with the predictions of norm-based but not exemplar-based coding, aftereffects were larger for strong than weak adaptors for both age groups. Results indicate that, like adults, children's coding of facial expressions is norm-based.
ISSN:0096-1523
1939-1277
DOI:10.1037/a0031117