Citation

Nelson NL, Mondloch CJ. J. Exp. Child Psychol. 2018; 172: 13-24.

Affiliation

Department of Psychology, Brock University, St. Catharines, ON L2S 3A1, Canada; ARC Centre of Excellence in Cognition and Its Disorders, School of Psychology, University of Western Australia, Crawley, WA 6009, Australia.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2018, Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

10.1016/j.jecp.2018.03.001

PMID

29573670

Abstract

The majority of studies of emotion perception have relied on static isolated facial expressions. These expressions differ markedly from real-world expressions that include movement and multiple cues (e.g., bodies), leaving our understanding of how expression perception develops incomplete. We examined the looking patterns of younger children (4- and 5-year-olds), older children (8- and 9-year-olds), and adults while watching dynamic video clips or static images of four different emotional expressions: happiness, sadness, anger, and fear. Expressions were presented in three conditions: face only, body only, and whole person (face and body). Children's and adults' looking patterns were affected by whether stimuli were static or dynamic and by which cues were available. Children looked to the head less for static stimuli than for dynamic stimuli, but this difference did not emerge for adults. Children and adults attended to different expression cues when presented with static images. These results demonstrate the need for increased use of dynamic stimuli in developmental studies of expression.

Copyright © 2018 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Language: en

Keywords

Children; Dynamic expression; Emotion; Facial Expression; Postural expression; Visual attention