The Confusion of Fear and Surprise: A Developmental Study of the Perceptual-Attentional Limitation Hypothesis Using Eye Movements

ABSTRACT

The goal of the present study was to test the Perceptual-Attentional Limitation Hypothesis in children and adults by manipulating the distinctiveness between expressions and recording eye movements. Children 3–5 and 9–11 years old as well as adults were presented pairs of expressions and required to identify a target emotion. Children 3–5 years old were less accurate than those 9–11 years old and adults. All children viewed pictures longer than adults but did not spend more time attending to the relevant cues. For all participants, accuracy for the recognition of fear was lower than for surprise when the distinctive cue was in the brow only. They also took longer and spent more time in both the mouth and brow zones than when a cue was in the mouth or both areas. Adults and children 9–11 years old made more comparisons between the expressions when fear comprised a single distinctive cue in the brow than when the distinctive cue was in the mouth only or when both cues were present. Children 3–5 years old made more comparisons for brow only than both. The results of the present study extend on the Perceptual-Attentional Limitation Hypothesis showing an importance of both decoder and stimuli, and an interaction between decoder and stimuli characteristics.

Keywords:

• confusion fear/surprise
• development
• eye movements
• facial expressions
• perceptual-attentional limitation hypothesis

Notes

ⁱFor the children samples, where larger difficulties in processing were observed, analyses were also computed on the dwell time in the eye area, which constitute an area comprising information that is identical for fear and surprise. Results revealed that participants spend more time in this area when the distinctive cue between the expressions is in the brow only (278 ms) than when the cue is in the mouth (181 ms) or when both cues are activated (185 ms), F(2, 62) = 19.07, η²_p =.38. This additional time in the eyes is not associated with a preferential attraction to this zone for this particular prototype because participants are not faster at looking at either the left or right eye from the onset of the presentation of the pictures but, actually, slower for the brow-only prototype (2867 ms) than for the mouth-only (2265 ms) or both (2350 ms) prototypes, F(2, 46) = 3.69, η²_p =.14, (this analysis is based on 24 of the 32 children because some children did not look at both eyes). These results are also suggesting that participants have a difficulty in finding the relevant information and are searching for the distinctive cues.