Children’s representations of facial expression and identity: Identity-contingent expression aftereffects

This investigation used adaptation aftereffects to examine developmental changes in the perception of facial expressions. Previous studies have shown that adults’ perceptions of ambiguous facial expressions are biased following adaptation to intense expressions. These expression aftereffects are str...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of experimental child psychology 2009-11, Vol.104 (3), p.326-345
Main Authors: Vida, Mark D., Mondloch, Catherine J.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adolescent
Adults
Age Differences
Age Factors
Association Learning
Attention
Biological and medical sciences
Child
Child development
Child Psychology
Child, Preschool
Children
Cognition & reasoning
Comparative Analysis
Concept Formation
Cues
Developmental psychology
Discrimination (Psychology)
Emotions
Face
Face adaptation
Face perception
Facial Expression
Facial expressions
Female
Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology
Human Body
Humans
Male
Memory, Short-Term
Nonverbal Communication
Pattern Recognition, Visual
Perception
Perceptual development
Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry
Psychology. Psychophysiology
Reaction Time
Visual perception
Young Adult
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:This investigation used adaptation aftereffects to examine developmental changes in the perception of facial expressions. Previous studies have shown that adults’ perceptions of ambiguous facial expressions are biased following adaptation to intense expressions. These expression aftereffects are strong when the adapting and probe expressions share the same facial identity but are mitigated when they are posed by different identities. We extended these findings by comparing expression aftereffects and categorical boundaries in adults versus 5- to 9-year-olds ( n = 20/group). Children displayed adult-like aftereffects and categorical boundaries for happy/sad by 7 years of age and for fear/anger by 9 years of age. These findings suggest that both children and adults perceive expressions according to malleable dimensions in which representations of facial expression are partially integrated with facial identity.
ISSN:0022-0965
1096-0457
DOI:10.1016/j.jecp.2009.06.003