The interference effect of emotional expressions on facial identity recognition in preschool-aged children

Abstract

The present study aims to explore the influence of facial emotional expressions on pre-scholars' identity recognition was analyzed using a two-alternative forced-choice matching task. A decrement was observed in children's performance with emotional faces compared with neutral faces, both when a happy emotional expression remained unchanged between the target face and the test faces and when the expression changed from happy to neutral or from neutral to happy between the target and the test faces (Experiment 1). Negative emotional expressions (i.e. fear and anger) also interfered with children's identity recognition (Experiment 2). Obtained evidence suggests that in preschool-age children, facial emotional expressions are processed in interaction with, rather than independently from, the encoding of facial identity information. The results are discussed in relationship with relevant research conducted with adults and children.

Keywords::

• Face processing
• Emotion
• Preschool-age
• Children
• Identity recognition

The authors are grateful to Dr Claudia Freitag and Dr Gudrun Schwarzer for providing the face database made in Giessen University. They wish to thank Dr Valentina Proietti for her precious help in the study and Dr Laura Fasoli and Dr Tony Genovese for collaborating in children testing. Also, They are indebted to Prof Renato Borgatti, responsible of Department of Child and Adolescent Neurology and Psychiatry, Scientific Institute “E. Medea”, Bosisio Parini, Lecco. A special thanks is extended to the principals, teachers, parents and children of the schools where the project took place.

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.