Shades of emotion: What the addition of sunglasses or masks to faces reveals about the development of facial expression processing

Abstract

a b s t r a c tThree studies investigated developmental changes in facial expression processing, between 3 years-of-age and adulthood. For adults and older children, the addition of sunglasses to upright faces caused an equivalent decrement in performance to face inversion. However, younger children showed better classification of expressions of faces wearing sunglasses than children who saw the same faces un-occluded. When the mouth area was occluded with a mask, children under nine years showed no impairment in expression classification, relative to un-occluded faces. An early selective focus of attention on the eyes may be optimal for socialization, but mediate against accurate expression classification. The data support a model in which a threshold level of attentional control must be reached before children can develop adult-like configural processing skills and be flexible in their use of face-processing strategies.

Judging the Intensity of Emotional Expression in Faces: the Effects of Colored Tints on Individuals With Autism Spectrum Disorder

“…Variation in intensity was achieved by morphing expressions with a neutral expression to yield 100%, 80%, and 60% intensity expressions, for example: 100% happy, 80% happy+ 20% neutral, 60% happy + 40% neutral. This set of stimuli was preferred over other sets because expressions are morphed with a neutral face, rather than with another expression [e.g., 50% happy + 50% angry, see Roberson et al, ]. The grayscale face images were shown behind an oval aperture (height 133 mm (600 pixels ‐ major axis) width 112 mm) in a gray mask, cropped of external features, such as hair and ears, with the oval shaped mask.…”

“…Intensity judgments may require more holistic processing than categorization but do not require access to verbal labels for emotion categories, so even individuals with language impairments could be tested [Harms et al, ; Damjanovic, Roberson, Athanasopoulos, Kasai & Dyson, ]. We also, used whole faces because different areas of the face are diagnostic of different facial expressions [Roberson, Damjanovic, & Kikutani, ; Roberson, Kikutani, Döge, Whitaker, & Majid, ; Smith, Cottrell, Gosselin, & Schyns, ] and we wanted to investigate the generality of the effects. We compared 16 colored tints to a neutral gray tint to rule out the possibility that improvements in performance were due to reduced contrast between face and background that would have occurred with any tint, rather than one specifically selected as improving clarity [Ludlow et al, ].…”

Brief Report: Is Impaired Classification of Subtle Facial Expressions in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders Related to Atypical Emotion Category Boundaries?

“…For each emotion three levels of intensity were presented (100%, high intensity; 80%, medium intensity and 60%, low intensity). 60% and 80% intensity emotions were developed using a morphing algorithm in which 100% expressions were morphed with a neutral expression (see Law Smith et al, 2010;Roberson et al, 2012 for evidence of validation of this face set). Luminance, brightness, contrast and skin tone were equated.…”

“…Rarely do TD children confuse negative with positive expressions. Infants as young as 6-months-old can associate the emotion label 'happy' to facial expressions, and by three years can associate it with situational information (i.e., they associate Classification of subtle facial expressions 4 the causes and consequences of an emotion -de Haan & Nelson, 1998;Widen & Russell, 2003); although even in older childhood happiness is still associated with other positive emotions when expressed at lower intensities (Montirosso, et al, 2010;Roberson et al, 2012). In contrast, children only begin to associate an angry face with the emotion label 'angry' at around three years of age (for a review see Widen, 2013;Widen & Russell, 2013).…”

“…We presented the same number of positive and negative emotions so that across-valence confusions could also be detected. Building on previous research this study examined emotional expression of different intensities using an established developmental paradigm (Roberson et al, 2012). We tested anger and happiness because TD children map these facial expressions to the appropriate emotion labels (Widen & Russell, 2008;Widen et al, 2015).…”