Facial expressions play a central role in diverse areas of psychology. However, facial stimuli are often only validated by adults, and there are no face databases validated by school-aged children. Validation by children is important because children still develop emotion recognition skills and may have different perceptions than adults. Therefore, in this study, we validated the adult Caucasian faces of the Radboud Faces Database (RaFD) in 8-to 12-year-old children (N = 652). Additionally, children rated valence, clarity, and model attractiveness. Emotion recognition rates were relatively high (72%; compared to 82% in the original validation by adults). Recognition accuracy was highest for happiness, below average for fear and disgust, and lowest for contempt. Children showed roughly the same emotion recognition pattern as adults, but were less accurate in distinguishing similar emotions. As expected, in general, 10-to 12-year-old children had a higher emotion recognition accuracy than 8-and 9-year-olds. Overall, girls slightly outperformed boys. More nuanced differences in these gender and age effects on recognition rates were visible per emotion. The current study provides researchers with recommendation on how to use the RaFD adult pictures in child studies. Researchers can select appropriate stimuli for their research using the online available validation data.

To draw valid and reliable conclusions from child studies involving facial expressions, well-controlled and validated (child) facial stimuli are necessary. The current study is the first to validate the facial emotional expressions of child models in school-aged children. In this study, we validated the Radboud Faces Database child models in a large sample of children ( N = 547; 256 boys) aged between 8 and 12. In addition, associated validation measures such as valence, clarity, and model attractiveness were examined. Overall, the results indicated that children were able to accurately identify the emotional expressions on the child faces in approximately 70% of the cases. The highest accuracy rates were found for “happiness,” whereas “contempt” received the lowest accuracy scores. Children confused the emotions “fear” and “surprise,” and the emotions “contempt” and “neutral” with one another. Ratings of all facial stimuli are available (https://osf.io/7srgw/) and can be used to select appropriate stimuli to investigate the processing of children’s facial emotional expressions.

The current study aimed to investigate the discrepancy between self-reported and peerreported likeability among children, and the relation with social anxiety, depression, and social support. In total, 532 children between 7 and 12 years completed questionnaires about social anxiety symptoms, depressive symptoms, and social support, estimated their own likeability, and indicated how much they liked their classmates. Children with higher levels of social anxiety or depression overestimated their likeability less or even underestimated their likeability. Social anxiety symptoms, but not depressive symptoms, were significant predictors of the discrepancy. Social support was positively related to likeability and negatively related to social anxiety, but did not moderate the association between social anxiety symptoms and perception accuracy of likeability. These results are in line with cognitive theories of childhood social anxiety, and they stress the importance of using multi-informant measures when studying the relation between social anxiety and social functioning in children. Statement of contributionWhat is already known on this subject?Socially anxious children are afraid to be rejected and less liked by their peers. Socially anxious children rate themselves as less liked by their peers. It is unclear whether peers actually rated socially anxious children as less liked.