The integration of visual context information in facial emotion recognition in 5- to 15-year-olds

Anne Theurel (1) , Arnaud Witt (2) , Jennifer Malsert (1) , Fleur Lejeune (3) , Chiara Fiorentini (1) , Koviljka Barisnikov (3) , Edouard Gentaz (4, 1)

1 SMAS - Laboratoire du Développement Sensori-Moteur, Affectif et Social
2 LEAD - Laboratoire d'Etude de l'Apprentissage et du Développement [Dijon]
3 UPCNE - Unité de Psychologie Clinique et de Neuropsychologie de l'Enfant
4 LPNC - Laboratoire de Psychologie et NeuroCognition

The current study investigated the role of congruent visual context information in the recognition of facial emotional expression in 190 participants from 5 to 15 years of age. Children performed a matching task that presented pictures with different facial emotional expressions (anger, disgust, happiness, fear, and sadness) in two conditions: with and without a visual context. The results showed that emotions presented with visual context information were recognized more accurately than those presented in the absence of visual context. The context effect remained steady with age but varied according to the emotion presented and the gender of participants. The findings demonstrated for the first time that children from the age of 5 years are able to integrate facial expression and visual context information, and this integration improves facial emotion recognition.

Mots clés: Emotion; Facial expression; Visual context; Development; Children; Context integration; Social cognition; Language impairment

Domaines: Sciences cognitives; Psychologie

Anne Theurel, Arnaud Witt, Jennifer Malsert, Fleur Lejeune, Chiara Fiorentini, et al.. The integration of visual context information in facial emotion recognition in 5- to 15-year-olds. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 2016, 150, pp.252 - 271. ⟨10.1016/j.jecp.2016.06.004⟩. ⟨hal-01427312⟩