The development of children's ability to recognize facial emotions and the role of configural informationin this development were investigated. In the study, 100 5-, 7-, 9-, and 11-year-olds and 26 adultsneeded to recognize the emotion displayed by upright and upside-down faces. The same participantsneeded to recognize the emotion displayed by the top half of an upright or upside-down face that was orwas not aligned with a bottom half that displayed another emotion. The results showed that the ability torecognize facial emotion develops with age, with a developmental course that depends on the emotion tobe recognized. Moreover, children at all ages and adults exhibited both an inversion effect and a compositeeffect, suggesting that children rely on configural information to recognize facial emotions.

No abstract

The question discussed in the two following experiments concerns the effect of facial expressions on face recognition. Famous and unknown faces with neutral or smiling expression were presented for different inspection durations (15 ms vs 1000 ms). Subjects had to categorize these faces as famous or unknown (Experiment 1), or estimate their degree of familiarity on a rating scale (Experiment 2). Results showed that the smile increased ratings of familiarity for unfamiliar faces (Experiments 1 and 2) and for famous faces (Experiment 2). These data are discussed in the framework of current face-recognition models and are interpreted in terms of social value of the smile. It is proposed that the smiling bias found here acts at the level of the decision process.