The ability to recognize emotions quickly and accurately is an important social skill. We know that children’s recognition of the basic emotions (happy, sad, angry, fear, surprise, disgust) develops quite early (around 5 years old) and is as good as adults by around 10 to 12 years old. Similarly, children’s facial emotion processing develops between 5 and 10 years old. In the past, researchers have found that adults who feel more anxious in social situations or are have negative feelings about the self tend to be more sensitive to emotional displays.
The present project seeks to extend this research and to explore links between social, emotional, and biological factors that may influence children’s emotion recognition. Children from three age groups (6-, 8-, and 10-years-old) will participate in this project. We aim to explore how children social and emotional feelings can predict how well the child recognises emotion, after considering the role of emotion processing. In addition to assessing children’s ability to recognise emotions, we will also explore the following.
Children‘s processing of emotions in the brain. We will show children images of faces that have a
n emotion portrayed only on one side. Two faces will be shown, one above the other. The bottom face will be the mirror image of the top face (see the sample image to the side). Children’s decisions about which faces are more emotional indicates if they are more likely to process emotions in the right hemisphere or the left hemisphere.
Children’s feelings in different social situations. Children will asked to respond to a brief set of questions about their feelings during social interactions to assess if these may relate to their recognition of emotion.
Children’s feelings about the self. Children will asked to respond to a brief set of questions about their feelings about themselves (e.g., how often they feel lonely, how often they play sports) to assess if these may relate to their recognition of emotion.
Researchers: Jessica Hewitt, Sara Lakin, Riam Muayad, and Helen Wooldridge