Emotional facial perception development in 7, 9 and 11 year-old children: The emergence of a silent eye-tracked emotional other-race effect

PLoS One. 2020 May 11;15(5):e0233008. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0233008. eCollection 2020.

Abstract

The present study examined emotional facial perception (happy and angry) in 7, 9 and 11-year-old children from Caucasian and multicultural environments with an offset task for two ethnic groups of faces (Asian and Caucasian). In this task, participants were required to respond to a dynamic facial expression video when they believed that the first emotion presented had disappeared. Moreover, using an eye-tracker, we evaluated the ocular behavior pattern used to process these different faces. The analyses of reaction times do not show an emotional other-race effect (i.e., a facility in discriminating own-race faces over to other-race ones) in Caucasian children for Caucasian vs. Asian faces through offset times, but an effect of emotional face appeared in the oldest children. Furthermore, an eye-tracked ocular emotion and race-effect relative to processing strategies is observed and evolves between age 7 and 11. This study strengthens the interest in advancing an eye-tracking study in developmental and emotional processing studies, showing that even a "silent" effect should be detected and shrewdly analyzed through an objective means.

MeSH terms

  • Anger
  • Asian People
  • Child
  • Child Development
  • Emotions*
  • Eye Movement Measurements
  • Eye Movements
  • Facial Expression*
  • Facial Recognition*
  • Female
  • Fixation, Ocular
  • Happiness
  • Humans
  • Male
  • Photic Stimulation
  • Reaction Time
  • Recognition, Psychology
  • White People

Grants and funding

The authors received no specific funding for this work.