Recognizing, discriminating, and labeling emotional expressions in a free-sorting task: A developmental story.

Abstract

Recognizing emotional expressions across different people and discriminating between them are important social skills. We examined their development using a novel free-sorting task in which children (aged 5 to 10) and adults sorted 20 faces (posing sadness, anger, fear, and disgust) into piles such that all faces in each pile were feeling the same. Participants could make as many or few piles (emotion categories) as they liked and then labeled each pile. There were no age-related changes in the number of piles made. Children made more confusion errors (two emotions in the same pile) than adults, a pattern that decreased with age. Errors were not random, but disproportionately involved placing fearful faces into piles labeled sad and disgusted faces into piles labeled angry-especially among children who did not produce fear and disgust labels, respectively. Our findings are consistent with differentiation and constructivist models of the development of emotion perception.

We need to move beyond rating scales, white faces and adult perceivers: Invited Commentary on Sutherland & Young (2022), understanding trait impressions from faces

“…Second, facial impressions do not fully mature until around 10 years of age (Siddique et al, 2022), a pattern partially attributable to prolonged development of adult‐like perception of facial displays of emotion. Infants differentiate positive versus negative emotions, but the ability to accurately differentiate negatively valenced emotions takes many years to become adult‐like (Matthews et al, 2022; Widen & Russell, 2008). Given the influence of facial expressions on first impressions (e.g.…”

The representation of emotion knowledge across development

“…The present data uncover a similar pattern of finer‐grained differentiation across development for emotion knowledge. We found that children first use broad, primarily valence‐based distinctions, and with greater experience, draw more fine‐grained distinctions that use emotion category information (Matthews et al, 2020; Widen, 2013). Rather than a distinct shift from using valence to using emotion categories, we found continued and refined use of valence and emotion categories across development.…”

“…” ( Nelson & Russell, 2011 ; Widen & Russell, 2003 ). Other common methods include sorting images into labeled piles ( Hoemann et al, 2021 ; Matthews et al, 2020 ), confirming whether labels match an image displayed with prompts such as “ Is this person feeling sad? ” ( Widen & Russell, 2008 ), or selecting a stimulus from an array of predetermined response options ( Chronaki et al, 2015 ; Leitzke & Pollak, 2016 ; Pollak & Sinha, 2002 ).…”

Interpreting teasing through texting: The role of emoji, initialisms, relationships, and rejection sensitivity in ambiguous SMS.

“…The use of an emoji was related to more positive interpretations of teasing texts. The specific emoji used, the “winking face with tongue,” combines two facial expressions (i.e., the wink and the sticking out tongue) which could make it more effective in conveying emotions (Matthews et al, 2022) or other nonverbal cues (Dynel, 2008). In support of such a view, the same neurological processing involved in the decoding of irony has been associated with the processing of the “wink” emoji (Weissman & Tanner, 2018).…”