The Moving Window Technique: A Window Into Developmental Changes in Attention During Facial Emotion Recognition

Abstract

The strategies children employ to selectively attend to different parts of the face may reflect important developmental changes in facial emotion recognition. Using the Moving Window Technique (MWT), children aged 5-12 years and adults (N = 129) explored faces with a mouse-controlled window in an emotion recognition task. An age-related increase in attention to the left eye emerged at age 11-12 years and reached significance in adulthood. This left-eye bias is consistent with previous eye tracking research and findings of a perceptual bias for the left side of faces. These results suggest that a strategic attentional bias to the left eye begins to emerge at age 11-12 years and is likely established sometime in adolescence.

Natural, but not artificial, facial movements elicit the left visual field bias in infant face scanning

“…In line with this finding (Guo, Meints, C. Hall, S. Hall, & Mills, 2009) observed such face specificity in terms of longer looking time on the left face half in adults. These studies reflect the underlying role of the right hemispheric lateralized face selective neural network, which is shaped by long-term face experience (Birmingham et al, 2012). The second line of studies for the LVF attentional bias mainly compared the face-scanning pattern in a typically developing population to that in individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD).…”

Selective attention to the mouth of talking faces in monolinguals and bilinguals aged 5 months to 5 years.

“…Interestingly, studies in which children saw still faces have indicated that basic face-processing abilities continue to be refined throughout childhood and into adolescence (Pascalis et al, 2011). One study that showed participants still emotional faces found that children's strong interest in the mouth persists through ages 5-10 years, only declining towards adult levels around age 11-12 years (Birmingham et al, 2013). It may be that children's immature gaze patterns towards talking faces are strongly influenced by how they process faces in general, rather than being tightly coupled with language abilities (see also Xiao et al, 2015, for evidence that infants' interest to the mouth increases across the first year of life when viewing faces with non-linguistic motion such as chewing).…”

Perceptual asymmetries and handedness: a neglected link?

“…However, the use of different methods seems to provide data in favor of both earlier (e.g., eye tracking; Wheeler, 2010; Liu et al, 2011; Dundas et al, 2012b) and later (e.g., moving window technique; Birmingham et al, 2012) emergence of an appreciable leftward bias in face processing. Similarly, a developmental trend has been shown in studies on the right-hemispheric advantage for face processing (Reynolds and Jeeves, 1978), although it is not always observed, maybe because of procedural differences (Young and Ellis, 1976; Young and Bion, 1980).…”

“…These studies suggest a link between the lateralization of emotional processing and the understanding of others’ emotional/cognitive states, which is bolstered by their similar time course, theory of mind emerging by the age of 4 years and improving during childhood (Baron-Cohen, 1995). Moreover, the leftward bias for faces approaches adult-like levels by the age of 10 years (Chiang et al, 2000; Workman et al, 2006; Anes and Short, 2009; Taylor et al, 2012), just before children start to exhibit a preference for the left eye (from the observer’s viewpoint) during face scanning (Birmingham et al, 2012) and a patent improvement in their ability to interpret emotion from eyes (Tonks et al, 2007). …”