A meta-analytic review of emotion recognition and aging: implications for neuropsychological models of aging

This meta-analysis of 28 data sets (N=705 older adults, N=962 younger adults) examined age differences in emotion recognition across four modalities: faces, voices, bodies/contexts, and matching of faces to voices. The results indicate that older adults have increased difficulty recognising at least some of the basic emotions (anger, sadness, fear, disgust, surprise, happiness) in each modality, with some emotions (anger and sadness) and some modalities (face-voice matching) creating particular difficulties. The predominant pattern across all emotions and modalities was of age-related decline with the exception that there was a trend for older adults to be better than young adults at recognising disgusted facial expressions. These age-related changes are examined in the context of three theoretical perspectives-positivity effects, general cognitive decline, and more specific neuropsychological change in the social brain. We argue that the pattern of age-related change observed is most consistent with a neuropsychological model of adult aging stemming from changes in frontal and temporal volume, and/or changes in neurotransmitters.

Age Differences in Emotion Recognition Skills and the Visual Scanning of Emotion Faces

Research suggests that a person's emotion recognition declines with advancing years. We examined whether or not this age-related decline was attributable to a tendency to overlook emotion information in the eyes. In Experiment 1, younger adults were significantly better than older adults at inferring emotions from full faces and eyes, though not from mouths. Using an eye tracker in Experiment 2, we found young adults, in comparison with older adults, to have superior emotion recognition performance and to look proportionately more to eyes than mouths. However, although better emotion recognition performance was significantly correlated with more eye looking in younger adults, the same was not true in older adults. We discuss these results in terms of brain changes with age.

Differences in the Way Older and Younger Adults Rate Threat in Faces But Not Situations

We compared young and healthy older adults' ability to rate photos of faces and situations (e.g., sporting activities) for the degree of threat they posed. Older adults did not distinguish between more and less dangerous faces to the same extent as younger adults did. In contrast, we found no significant age differences in young and older adults' ability to distinguish between high- and low-danger situations. The differences between young and older adults on the face task were independent of age differences in older adults' fluid IQ. We discuss results in relation to differences between young and older adults on emotion-recognition tasks; we also discuss sociocognitive and neuropsychological (e.g., amygdala) theories of aging.

Mother and infant talk about mental states relates to desire language and emotion understanding

This study assessed the relation between mother mental state language and child desire language and emotion understanding in 15-24-month-olds. At both time points, mothers described pictures to their infants and mother talk was coded for mental and nonmental state language. Children were administered 2 emotion understanding tasks and their mental and nonmental state vocabulary levels were obtained via parental report. The results demonstrated that mother use of desire language with 15-month-old children uniquely predicted a child's later mental state language and emotion task performance, even after accounting for potentially confounding variables. In addition, mothers' tendency to refer to the child's over others' desires was the more consistent correlate of mental state language and emotion understanding.

Young infants' expectations about hidden objects

Infants aged 3-5 months (mean of approximately 4 months) were given a novel anticipatory looking task to test object permanence understanding. They were trained to expect an experimenter to retrieve an object from behind a transparent screen upon hearing a cue ("Doors up, here comes the hand"). The experimenter then hid the object behind one of two opaque screens and after either 2 or 8s gave the "doors up" cue. Infants looked to the correct location after the two-second delay, but not after the eight-second delay. This indicates a brief memory that the object is present behind the occluder. The study provides converging evidence that infants grasp object permanence by a young age. The novel anticipatory looking paradigm helps rule out counter-explanations applied to violation-of-expectation tasks.

Are A-not-B errors caused by a belief about object location?

Eight- to 12-month-olds might make A-not-B errors, knowing the object is in B but searching at A because of ancillary (attention, inhibitory, or motor memory) deficits, or they might genuinely believe the object is in A (conceptual deficit). This study examined how diligently infants searched for a hidden object they never found. An object was placed in A twice, and then in B. In a different task the object was placed beside A twice, and then in B. Infants made more A-not-B errors in the former task, and perseverating infants searched diligently in A rather than in B. Infants seemed to believe the object was in A, suggesting that both a conceptual deficit and ancillary deficits account for A-not-B errors.

Are A-not-B errors caused by a belief about object location?

Eight- to 12-month-olds might make A-not-B errors, knowing the object is in B but searching at A because of ancillary (attention, inhibitory, or motor memory) deficits, or they might genuinely believe the object is in A (conceptual deficit). This study examined how diligently infants searched for a hidden object they never found. An object was placed in A twice, and then in B. In a different task the object was placed beside A twice, and then in B. Infants made more A-not-B errors in the former task, and perseverating infants searched diligently in A rather than in B. Infants seemed to believe the object was in A, suggesting that both a conceptual deficit and ancillary deficits account for A-not-B errors.

The relation between children's and mothers' mental state language and theory-of-mind understanding

This study investigated the relation between mothers' utterances and theory of mind in a longitudinal study involving three time points over 1 year. Mothers were asked to describe some pictures to 82 children at all three time points. Mothers' use of mental state utterances in these descriptions at early time points was consistently correlated with later theory-of-mind understanding. This was true even when a number of potential mediators were accounted for, including children's own use of mental state language, their earlier theory-of-mind understanding, their language ability, their age, mothers' education, and other types of mother utterances. Mothers' mental state utterances seemed genuinely causal because early theory-of-mind ability was not related to later mother mental state utterances (i.e., it was not a reciprocal relation). Results also showed that children's desire talk preceded their talk about beliefs.

The relation between children's and mothers' mental state language and theory-of-mind understanding

This study investigated the relation between mothers' utterances and theory of mind in a longitudinal study involving three time points over 1 year. Mothers were asked to describe some pictures to 82 children at all three time points. Mothers' use of mental state utterances in these descriptions at early time points was consistently correlated with later theory-of-mind understanding. This was true even when a number of potential mediators were accounted for, including children's own use of mental state language, their earlier theory-of-mind understanding, their language ability, their age, mothers' education, and other types of mother utterances. Mothers' mental state utterances seemed genuinely causal because early theory-of-mind ability was not related to later mother mental state utterances (i.e., it was not a reciprocal relation). Results also showed that children's desire talk preceded their talk about beliefs.

Does eye gaze indicate implicit knowledge of false belief? Charting transitions in knowledge

Three-year-olds sometimes look to the correct location but give an incorrect verbal answer in a false belief task. We examined whether correct eye gaze among 3- to 5-year-old children indexed unconscious knowledge or low confidence conscious knowledge. Children "bet" counters on where they thought a story character would go. If children were conscious of the knowledge conveyed by their eye gaze then they should have bet modestly on their explicit answer (i.e., been unsure whether this answer or the answer conveyed through eye direction was correct). We found that children bet very highly on the location consistent with their explicit answer, suggesting that they were not aware of the knowledge conveyed through their eye gaze. This result was supported by a number of conditions that showed that betting was a sensitive measure of even small degrees of uncertainty. The results shed light on false-belief understanding, the implicit-explicit distinction, and transitional knowledge. We argue that the transition to a full understanding of false belief is marked by periods of implicit knowledge and explicit understanding with low confidence.

Social understanding in autism: eye gaze as a measure of core insights

Twenty-eight children with autism and 33 MLD children were given two tasks tapping social understanding and a control task tapping probability understanding. For each task there was a measure of eye gaze (where children looked when anticipating the return of a story character or an object) and a verbal measure (a direct question). We found that eye gaze was better than verbal performance at differentiating children with autism from children with MLD. Children with autism did not look to the correct location in anticipation of the story character's return in the social tasks, but they did look to the correct location in the nonsocial probability task. We also found that within the autistic group, children who looked least to the correct location were rated as having the most severe autistic characteristics. Further, we found that whereas verbal performance correlated with general language ability in the autistic group, eye gaze did not. We argue that: (a) eye gaze probably taps unconscious but core insights into social behavior and as such is better than verbal measures at differentiating children with autism from mentally handicapped controls, (b) eye gaze taps either spontaneous processes of simulation or rudimentary pattern recognition, both of which are less based in language, and (c) the social understanding of children with autism is probably based mostly on verbally mediated theories whereas control children also possess more spontaneous insights indexed by eye gaze.

Source monitoring and false memories in children: relation to certainty and executive functioning

We presented children aged 6, 8, and 10 years with a video and then an audio tape about a dog named Mick. Some information was repeated in the two sources and some was unique to one source. We examined: (a) children's hit rate for remembering whether events occurred and their tendency to make false alarms, (b) their memory for the context in which events occurred (source monitoring), (c) their certainty about hits, false alarms, and source, and (d) whether working memory and inhibition were related to hits, false alarms, and source monitoring. The certainty ratings revealed deficits in children's understanding of when they had erred on source questions and of when they had made false alarms. In addition, inhibitory ability accounted for unique variance in the ability to avoid false alarms and in some kinds of source monitoring but not hits. In contrast, working memory tended to correlate with all forms of memory including hits.

Why do infants make A not B errors in a search task, yet show memory for the location of hidden objects in a nonsearch task?

In 4 experiments, infants aged 8 to 12 months were tested on A not B search tasks, and nonsearch A not B tasks following the violation-of-expectation paradigm. A 1-location task and 2 control tasks were also conducted. In the nonsearch tasks, a toy was hidden in A, moved to B, and retrieved after a delay from either A (impossible) or B (possible). Results showed significantly longer looking times at impossible events, indicating some memory for where the object was hidden and an expectation of where it should be found. This effect occurred at delays at which infants made the A not B error when searching, and at a longer delay of 15 s. The results showed clearly that infants have some memory for the object's location, even at delays at which they search at the incorrect location. Discussion centers on how these results are accounted for within explanations of the A not B error.

Why do infants make A not B errors in a search task, yet show memory for the location of hidden objects in a nonsearch task?

In 4 experiments, infants aged 8 to 12 months were tested on A not B search tasks, and nonsearch A not B tasks following the violation-of-expectation paradigm. A 1-location task and 2 control tasks were also conducted. In the nonsearch tasks, a toy was hidden in A, moved to B, and retrieved after a delay from either A (impossible) or B (possible). Results showed significantly longer looking times at impossible events, indicating some memory for where the object was hidden and an expectation of where it should be found. This effect occurred at delays at which infants made the A not B error when searching, and at a longer delay of 15 s. The results showed clearly that infants have some memory for the object's location, even at delays at which they search at the incorrect location. Discussion centers on how these results are accounted for within explanations of the A not B error.

Older (but not younger) siblings facilitate false belief understanding

Results from 4 experiments and an analysis in which all data from 444 English and Japanese children are pooled show (a) a linear increase in understanding false belief with the number of older siblings, (b) no such effect for children younger than 3 years 2 months, (c) no helpful effect of younger siblings at any age (despite the large sample), (d) no effect of siblings' gender, and (e) no helpful effect of siblings on a task measuring children's understanding of how they know something. Discussion involves speculation about how older siblings may assist children (e.g., through pretend play and mental state language) and how different aspects of a theory of mind may develop through different means.

Older (but not younger) siblings facilitate false belief understanding

Results from 4 experiments and an analysis in which all data from 444 English and Japanese children are pooled show (a) a linear increase in understanding false belief with the number of older siblings, (b) no such effect for children younger than 3 years 2 months, (c) no helpful effect of younger siblings at any age (despite the large sample), (d) no effect of siblings' gender, and (e) no helpful effect of siblings on a task measuring children's understanding of how they know something. Discussion involves speculation about how older siblings may assist children (e.g., through pretend play and mental state language) and how different aspects of a theory of mind may develop through different means.