The integration of visual context information in facial emotion recognition in 5- to 15-year-olds

Pretend play-based training improves some socio-emotional competences in 5-6-year-old children: A large-scale study assessing implementation

The purpose of this study is to evaluate the effect of a pretend play-based training in 5-6-year-old children in a large scale school context on emotion comprehension, emotion regulation, prosocial behaviour and on their pretend play competences. The analysis of implementation variables was carried out in order to ensure program implementation quality in the experimental group. Results show an improvement in emotion comprehension and a decrease in aggressive behavioural responses in children in the experimental group (n = 101) compared to those in the control group (n = 79). Findings are discussed in regard to implementation outcomes and the influence of this form of play on the improvement of these variables.

Short report: Longitudinal study on emotion understanding in children with and without developmental language disorder

BACKGROUND

Children with Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) have difficult access to social interactions, which could in turn limit their opportunities to learn about others' emotions.

AIMS

This study aimed to investigate the developmental trajectories of emotion understanding in young children with and without DLD.

METHODS AND PROCEDURES

95 DLD children and 149 non-DLD children were tested twice, with an approximately two-year interval (M_age = 3.58 years at Time 1), on three indices for emotion understanding (discrimination, identification, and attribution in emotion-evoking situations).

OUTCOMES AND RESULTS

At Time 2, DLD children fell behind their non-DLD peers on the non-verbal task for emotion discrimination, while catching up on the verbal tasks for emotion identification and attribution. The two groups developed most of these skills with a similar improvement over time, but DLD children showed a greater increase in positive emotion identification and attribution with age than non-DLD children.

CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS

The findings showed the potential of DLD children to understand others' emotions in verbal tasks to a similar extent as their non-DLD peers. However, DLD children may still face difficulties understanding more implicit emotional messages in real-life situations, and longitudinal follow-ups are required to reveal these challenges.

Recognition of facial emotions across the lifespan: 8-year-olds resemble older adults

On standard emotion recognition tasks with relatively long or unlimited stimuli durations, recognition improves as children grow older, whereas older adults are worse than young adults. Crucially, it was unknown (a) how older adults compare to age groups below young adulthood and (b) whether children can recognize emotions at shorter durations, with short durations likely common in real life. We compared emotion recognition in 5-year-olds, 8-year-olds, young adults and older adults at very brief durations (50 ms, 250 ms) as well as standard unlimited durations. Eight-year-olds were better than 5-year-olds, young adults than all groups, and there was a striking similarity between 8-year-olds and older adults, providing the first clear indication that older adults' recognition abilities are equivalent to that of an 8-year-old at all durations. Emotion recognition was above chance on all emotions and durations among the three older age groups and on most stimuli for 5-year-olds.

The Interplay between Chronotype and Emotion Regulation in the Recognition of Facial Expressions of Emotion

Emotion regulation strategies affect the experience and processing of emotions and emotional stimuli. Chronotype has also been shown to influence the processing of emotional stimuli, with late chronotypes showing a bias towards better processing of negative stimuli. Additionally, greater eveningness has been associated with increased difficulties in emotion regulation and preferential use of expressive suppression strategies. Therefore, the present study aimed to understand the interplay between chronotype and emotion regulation on the recognition of dynamic facial expressions of emotion. To that end, 287 participants answered self-report measures and performed an online facial emotion recognition task from short video clips where a neutral face gradually morphed into a full-emotion expression (one of the six basic emotions). Participants should press the spacebar to stop each video as soon as they could recognize the emotional expression, and then identify it from six provided labels/emotions. Greater eveningness was associated with shorter response times (RT) in the identification of sadness, disgust and happiness. Higher scores of expressive suppression were associated with longer RT in identifying sadness, disgust, anger and surprise. Expressive suppression significantly moderated the relationship between chronotype and the recognition of sadness and anger, with chronotype being a significant predictor of emotion recognition times only at higher levels of expressive suppression. No significant effects were observed for cognitive reappraisal. These results are consistent with a negative bias in emotion processing in late chronotypes and increased difficulty in anger and sadness recognition for expressive suppressor morning-types.

Developing Students' Emotional Competencies in English Language Classes: Reciprocal Benefits and Practical Implications

Learning a foreign language involves a wide range of cognitive, social and affective skills. The present article gives ideas to develop socio-emotional competencies in English courses: the capacity to identify the emotion, to understand the causes and consequences, to express their emotions and to do so in a socially acceptable manner, to manage stress and to use their emotions to increase the effectiveness of thinking, decision making and actions. Content and language integrated learning (CLIL) is a dual approach aiming to develop both language and academic subject knowledge. It may be gradually introduced, embedding it at three levels: into the classroom (routines, organization, pupils’ behavior), the school and the curriculum. Successful learning in CLIL remains based on (1) communication, (2) ways of engaging in the learning process and (3) the use of meaning-making strategies. We propose a pedagogical sequence (several courses) to learn a second language based on the social and emotional learning approach, and the English coursebook MORE! 7e for primary school pupils (aged 10–11). We combine the specific language learning of the unit—talking about ourselves, people and their feelings—with the development of pupils’ basic emotional competencies, and discuss advantages and disadvantages to consider in order to successfully implement such lessons.

Effects of Body-Oriented Interventions on Preschoolers' Social-Emotional Competence: A Systematic Review

OBJECTIVE

A growing body of evidence supports the effectiveness of body-oriented interventions (BOI) in educational contexts, showing positive influences on social-emotional competence. Nevertheless, there is a lack of systematization of the evidence regarding preschool years. This is a two-part systematic review. In this first part, we aim to examine the effects of BOI on preschoolers' social-emotional competence outcomes.

DATA SOURCES

Searches were conducted in Pubmed, Scopus, PsycInfo, ERIC, Web of Science, Portal Regional da BVS and CINAHL.

ELIGIBILITY CRITERIA

English, French and Portuguese language articles published between January 2000 and October 2020, that evaluated the effects of BOI implemented in educational contexts on social-emotional competence of preschool children. Only randomized controlled trials (RCT) or quasi-RCT were included.

DATA EXTRACTION AND SYNTHESIS

Two reviewers independently completed data extraction and risk-of-bias assessment. The level of scientific evidence was measured through the Best Evidence Synthesis.

RESULTS

Nineteen studies were included. There was strong evidence that BOI do not improve anger/aggression, delay of gratification and altruism. Nevertheless, there was moderate evidence that BOI effectively improve other social-emotional outcomes, such as empathy, social interaction, social independence, general internalizing behaviors, and general externalizing behaviors. The lack of scientific evidence was compromised by the methodological quality of the studies.

CONCLUSION

BOI effectively improve specific social-emotional competences of preschool children.

SYSTEMATIC REVIEW REGISTRATION

PROSPERO, identifier CRD42020172248.

Emotion knowledge, social behaviour and locomotor activity predict the mathematic performance in 706 preschool children

What are the foundational abilities that young children must develop at the beginning of school for their future academic success? Little is known about how emotion knowledge, social behaviour, and locomotor activity are associated and how these abilities may be predictors of academic-mathematic performance (less correlated with the children's SES than pre-reading and linguistic achievement) in a large cohort of preschool children. Here we show that emotion knowledge, locomotor activity, social behaviour, and academic-mathematic performance are interrelated in 706 French preschool children aged 3 to 6. Mediation analyses reveal that the increase in academic-mathematic performance is explained by the increases in emotion knowledge and social behaviour and, in turn, children with a greater comprehension of emotions tend to have better locomotor skills and higher academic-mathematic scores. Additionally, sequential mediation analysis reveals that the increase in emotion knowledge, locomotor activity and social behaviour partially explains the increase in academic-mathematic performance. These results are discussed in relation to three possible mechanisms. Our findings are consistent with the political and scientific consensus on the importance of social-emotional abilities in the academic world at the beginning of school and suggest adding locomotor activity to these foundational abilities.

Identifying Emotional Expressions: Children's Reasoning About Pretend Emotions of Sadness and Anger

This study aims to further understand children’s capacity to identify and reason about pretend emotions by analyzing which sources of information they take into account when interpreting emotions simulated in pretend play contexts. A total of 79 children aged 3 to 8 participated in the final sample of the study. They were divided into the young group (ages 3 to 5) and the older group (6 to 8). The children were administered a facial emotion recognition task, a pretend emotions task, and a non-verbal cognitive ability test. In the pretend emotions task, the children were asked whether the protagonist of silent videos, who was displaying pretend emotions (pretend anger and pretend sadness), was displaying a real or a pretend emotion, and to justify their answer. The results show significant differences in the children’s capacity to identify and justify pretend emotions according to age and type of emotion. The data suggest that young children recognize pretend sadness, but have more difficulty detecting pretend anger. In addition, children seem to find facial information more useful for the detection of pretend sadness than pretend anger, and they more often interpret the emotional expression of the characters in terms of pretend play. The present research presents new data about the recognition of negative emotional expressions of sadness and anger and the type of information children take into account to justify their interpretation of pretend emotions, which consists not only in emotional expression but also contextual information.

Prosocial lying in children between 4 and 11 years of age: The role of emotional understanding and empathy

This study examined whether emotional understanding and empathy were predictors of prosocial lying in children aged 4 to 11 years. A total of 144 children participated in the study. To assess children's prosocial lying, we used the Helping Scenario, a classical experimental paradigm that allows children to lie to help others at their own expense. Children's emotional understanding was assessed using the Test of Emotion Comprehension, a test that measures the nine components of emotional understanding. Children's empathy was assessed using the Griffith Empathy Measure, a questionnaire completed by parents that measures affective and cognitive empathy. Results indicated that emotional understanding plays a crucial role in the development of children's ability to produce prosocial lies from 4 to 11 years of age. However, we found no significant relationship between empathy and prosocial lying. Finally, our results confirm that as children grew up, they lied more and more effectively. Overall, the results allow us to better understand the factors that contribute to the emergence and development of children's ability to produce prosocial lies.

The effects of a 'pretend play-based training' designed to promote the development of emotion comprehension, emotion regulation, and prosocial behaviour in 5- to 6-year-old Swiss children

The objective of this study was to evaluate the effects of a pretend play-based training designed to promote the development of socio-emotional competences. 79 children aged 5 to 6 years were evaluated before and after a pretend play-based training. The experimental group (39 children) received this programme on emotion comprehension, negative emotion regulation, and prosocial behaviour one hour a week for eleven weeks during class hours, while the control group (40 children) received no specific intervention. The programme was implemented by 5 teachers. The results show improvements in the ability to understand emotions in children who benefited from the training. These findings are discussed in the broader context of using this form of play as a privileged pedagogical tool to allow children to develop these competences.

Cross-Cultural and Environmental Influences on Facial Emotional Discrimination Sensitivity in 9-Year-Old Children from Swiss and Vietnamese Schools

Abstract. The Other Race Effect (ORE), i.e., recognition facilitation for own-race faces, is a well-established phenomenon with broad evidence in adults and infants. Nevertheless, the ORE in older children is poorly understood, and even less so for emotional face processing. This research samples 87 9-year-old children from Vietnamese and Swiss schools. In two separate studies, we evaluated the children’s abilities to perceive the disappearance of emotions in Asian and Caucasian faces in an offset task. The first study evaluated an “emotional ORE” in Vietnamese-Asian, Swiss-Caucasian, and Swiss-Multicultural children. Offset times showed an emotional ORE in Vietnamese-Asian children living in an ethnically homogeneous environment, whereas mixed ethnicities in Swiss children seem to have balanced performance between face types. The second study compared socioemotionally trained versus untrained Vietnamese-Asian children. Vietnamese children showed a strong emotional ORE and tend to increase their sensitivity to emotion offset after training. Moreover, an effect of emotion consistent with previous observation in adults could suggest a cultural sensitivity to disapproval signs. Taken together, the results suggest that 9-year-old children can present an emotional ORE, but that a heterogeneous environment or an emotional training could strengthen face-processing abilities without reducing skills on their own-group.

Emotion knowledge in neurotypical children and in those with down syndrome

This research aimed to assess two components of emotion knowledge (EK): receptive EK with face emotion identification and matching tasks, and emotion situation knowledge with the emotion attribution task (EAT). Study 1 assessed the development of EK in 265 neurotypical (NT) children (4-11 years), divided into four age groups. Overall, results showed a significant improvement of EK with age in the NT population for the three tasks, especially between the ages of 4/5 and 6/7. Children were less successful at the EAT in comparison to the other two tasks, indicating that receptive EK develops earlier than emotion situation knowledge. The presence of visual context (EAT) does not help to improve our children's overall facial emotion recognition, especially for anger and sadness, while these emotions are well recognized in isolated facial expressions (emotion identification). Study 2 compared EK between 32 children with Down syndrome (CA: M = 13 years, SD = 2.13) and 32 NT children (CA: M = 5.3 years, SD = 1.36): matched on a vocabulary task. Children with DS had more difficulties in EK than NT children. They had lower performances on the identification and the EAT tasks, while exhibited similar performances to their NT controls on the emotion matching task. Moreover, good abilities to identify emotion expressions seem to be a prerequisite for successful face-context recognition in NT children, but not in children with DS. Difficulties encountered by children with DS could result from executive dysfunction when dealing with complex visual information in addition to emotion processing difficulties.

Emotional facial perception development in 7, 9 and 11 year-old children: The emergence of a silent eye-tracked emotional other-race effect

The present study examined emotional facial perception (happy and angry) in 7, 9 and 11-year-old children from Caucasian and multicultural environments with an offset task for two ethnic groups of faces (Asian and Caucasian). In this task, participants were required to respond to a dynamic facial expression video when they believed that the first emotion presented had disappeared. Moreover, using an eye-tracker, we evaluated the ocular behavior pattern used to process these different faces. The analyses of reaction times do not show an emotional other-race effect (i.e., a facility in discriminating own-race faces over to other-race ones) in Caucasian children for Caucasian vs. Asian faces through offset times, but an effect of emotional face appeared in the oldest children. Furthermore, an eye-tracked ocular emotion and race-effect relative to processing strategies is observed and evolves between age 7 and 11. This study strengthens the interest in advancing an eye-tracking study in developmental and emotional processing studies, showing that even a "silent" effect should be detected and shrewdly analyzed through an objective means.

CINET: A Brain-Inspired Deep Learning Context-Integrating Neural Network Model for Resolving Ambiguous Stimuli

The brain uses contextual information to uniquely resolve the interpretation of ambiguous stimuli. This paper introduces a deep learning neural network classification model that emulates this ability by integrating weighted bidirectional context into the classification process. The model, referred to as the CINET, is implemented using a convolution neural network (CNN), which is shown to be ideal for combining target and context stimuli and for extracting coupled target-context features. The CINET parameters can be manipulated to simulate congruent and incongruent context environments and to manipulate target-context stimuli relationships. The formulation of the CINET is quite general; consequently, it is not restricted to stimuli in any particular sensory modality nor to the dimensionality of the stimuli. A broad range of experiments is designed to demonstrate the effectiveness of the CINET in resolving ambiguous visual stimuli and in improving the classification of non-ambiguous visual stimuli in various contextual environments. The fact that the performance improves through the inclusion of context can be exploited to design robust brain-inspired machine learning algorithms. It is interesting to note that the CINET is a classification model that is inspired by a combination of brain's ability to integrate contextual information and the CNN, which is inspired by the hierarchical processing of information in the visual cortex.

Causal Information Over Facial Expression: Modulation of Facial Expression Processing by Congruency and Causal Factor of the Linguistic Cues in 5-Year-Old Japanese Children

It is unknown whether linguistic cues influence preschoolers' recognition of facial expression when the emotion of the face is incongruent with the linguistic cues and what type of linguistic cue is influential in the modulation of facial expression. In a priming task, we presented 5-year-old children three types of linguistic information conveying happy or sad emotion (simple label, label with rich causal explanation of emotion, and label with poor causal explanation of emotion) prior to the presentation of a happy or a sad face. We asked participants to recognize emotion of facial expression and examined whether they follow linguistic information than the facial expression when the emotions of linguistic information and face were incongruent. As a result, children who were presented the label with rich causal explanation judged emotion of face according to the linguistic information, whereas children who were presented the simple label or the label with poor causal explanation followed the emotions of facial expression. This result indicated that children's autonomic reliance on situational cues depends on the emotional causality and the concreteness of emotional state conveyed by the linguistic cues. This finding contributes to our understanding of the face inferiority effect on children's developing notion of emotions.

Development of Human Emotion Circuits Investigated Using a Big-Data Analytic Approach: Stability, Reliability, and Robustness

Emotion perception is fundamental to affective and cognitive development and is thought to involve distributed brain circuits. Efforts to chart neurodevelopmental changes in emotion have been severely hampered by narrowly focused approaches centered on activation of individual brain regions and small sample sizes. Here we investigate the maturation of human functional brain circuits associated with identification of fearful, angry, sad, happy, and neutral faces using a large sample of 759 children, adolescents, and adults (ages 8-23; female/male = 419/340). Network analysis of emotion-related brain circuits revealed three functional modules, encompassing lateral frontoparietal, medial prefrontal-posterior cingulate, and subcortical-posterior insular cortices, with hubs in medial prefrontal, but not posterior cingulate, cortex. This overall network architecture was stable by age 8, and it anchored maturation of circuits important for salience detection and cognitive control, as well as dissociable circuit patterns across distinct emotion categories. Our findings point to similarities and differences in functional circuits associated with identification of fearful, angry, sad, happy, and neutral faces, and reveal aspects of brain circuit organization underlying emotion perception that are stable over development as well as features that change with age. Reliability analyses demonstrated the robustness of our findings and highlighted the importance of large samples for probing functional brain circuit development. Our study emphasizes a need to focus beyond amygdala circuits and provides a robust neurodevelopmental template for investigating emotion perception and identification in psychopathology.SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT Emotion perception is fundamental to cognitive and affective development. However, efforts to chart neurodevelopmental changes in emotion perception have been hampered by narrowly focused approaches centered on the amygdala and prefrontal cortex and small sample sizes. Using a large sample of 759 children, adolescents, and adults and a multipronged analytical strategy, we investigated the development of brain network organization underlying identification and categorization of fearful, happy, angry, sad, and neutral facial expressions. Results revealed a developmentally stable modular architecture that anchored robust age-related and emotion category-related changes in brain connectivity across multiple brain systems that extend far beyond amygdala circuits and provide a new template for investigation of emotion processing in the developing brain.

The role of visual experience in the production of emotional facial expressions by blind people: a review

Facial expressions of emotion are nonverbal behaviors that allow us to interact efficiently in social life and respond to events affecting our welfare. This article reviews 21 studies, published between 1932 and 2015, examining the production of facial expressions of emotion by blind people. It particularly discusses the impact of visual experience on the development of this behavior from birth to adulthood. After a discussion of three methodological considerations, the review of studies reveals that blind subjects demonstrate differing capacities for producing spontaneous expressions and voluntarily posed expressions. Seventeen studies provided evidence that blind and sighted spontaneously produce the same pattern of facial expressions, even if some variations can be found, reflecting facial and body movements specific to blindness or differences in intensity and control of emotions in some specific contexts. This suggests that lack of visual experience seems to not have a major impact when this behavior is generated spontaneously in real emotional contexts. In contrast, eight studies examining voluntary expressions indicate that blind individuals have difficulty posing emotional expressions. The opportunity for prior visual observation seems to affect performance in this case. Finally, we discuss three new directions for research to provide additional and strong evidence for the debate regarding the innate or the culture-constant learning character of the production of emotional facial expressions by blind individuals: the link between perception and production of facial expressions, the impact of display rules in the absence of vision, and the role of other channels in expression of emotions in the context of blindness.

Recognition of Facial Emotional Expressions Among Italian Pre-adolescents, and Their Affective Reactions

The recognition of emotional facial expressions is a central aspect for an effective interpersonal communication. This study aims to investigate whether changes occur in emotion recognition ability and in the affective reactions (self-assessed by participants through valence and arousal ratings) associated with the viewing of basic facial expressions during preadolescence (n = 396, 206 girls, aged 11-14 years, Mage = 12.73, DS = 0.91). Our results confirmed that happiness is the best recognized emotion during preadolescence. However, a significant decrease in recognition accuracy across age emerged for fear expressions. Moreover, participants' affective reactions elicited by the vision of happy facial expressions resulted to be the most pleasant and arousing compared to the other emotional expressions. On the contrary, the viewing of sadness was associated with the most negative affective reactions. Our results also revealed a developmental change in participants' affective reactions to the stimuli. Implications are discussed by taking into account the role of emotion recognition as one of the main factors involved in emotional development.

The impact of contextual information on the emotion recognition of children with an intellectual disability

BACKGROUND

Research suggests that having relevant contextual information can help increase the accuracy of emotion recognition in typically developing (TD) individuals and adults with an intellectual disability. The impact of context on the emotion recognition of children with intellectual disability is unknown.

METHOD

Emotion recognition tasks, which varied in terms of contextual information, were completed by 102 children (45 with and 57 without intellectual disability).

RESULTS

There was a significant effect of age and group, with older and TD children performing better on average. There were significant group by condition interactions, whereby children with intellectual disability were more accurate at identifying emotions depicted by line drawings compared with photos with contextual information that was not directly related to the emotion being depicted. The opposite was found for TD children.

CONCLUSIONS

These results have implications for socio-emotional interventions, such as universal school programmes.

Seven- to 11-Year-Olds' Developing Ability to Recognize Natural Facial Expressions of Basic Emotions

Being able to recognize facial expressions of basic emotions is of great importance to social development. However, we still know surprisingly little about children's developing ability to interpret emotions that are expressed dynamically, naturally, and subtly, despite real-life expressions having such appearance in the vast majority of cases. The current research employs a new technique of capturing dynamic, subtly expressed natural emotional displays (happy, sad, angry, shocked, and disgusted). Children aged 7, 9, and 11 years (and adults) were systematically able to discriminate each emotional display from alternatives in a five-way choice. Children were most accurate in identifying the expression of happiness and were also relatively accurate in identifying the expression of sadness; they were far less accurate than adults in identifying shocked and disgusted. Children who performed well academically also tended to be the most accurate in recognizing expressions, and this relationship maintained independently of chronological age. Generally, the findings testify to a well-developed ability to recognize very subtle naturally occurring expressions of emotions.

Face Processing Measures of Social Cognition: A Dimensional Approach to Developmental Psychopathology

BACKGROUND

Social cognition impairments in neurodevelopmental disorders impact functioning. Face processing is the most extensively studied aspect of social cognition, commonly indexing this construct in neuropsychiatric disorders compared with typically developing youths. Applying social cognition measures as a Research Domain Criteria concept in the clinical arena requires establishing cutoffs for intervention and identifying vulnerability for psychopathology across disorders. This can be accomplished by comparing extreme performers across multiple clinical symptom features.

METHODS

The Philadelphia Neurodevelopmental Cohort (N = 9498), a community sample of youths (8-21 years old), was assessed with a structured interview (Kiddie Schedule for Affective Disorders and Schizophrenia). The Penn Computerized Neurocognitive Battery was administered measuring accuracy and response time on Executive, Episodic Memory, Complex Cognition, and Social Cognition domains. We parsed participants by performance on social cognition into tertiles and examined their neurocognitive and clinical profiles.

RESULTS

The top social cognition group outperformed the bottom group in face memory and complex reasoning. Concerning symptoms, the top performing group did not differ from the middle group, but the bottom performing group had higher externalizing and psychosis symptoms. There were sex differences in social cognition and symptom profiles but no sex × performance or sex × diagnosis × domain interactions.

CONCLUSIONS

Social cognition is supported by strong face memory and complex reasoning skills. Poor performance portends more severe externalizing and psychosis symptoms. That average performance is sufficient for normative symptomatology suggests that interventions aimed at ameliorating social cognition deficits, as measured here, could be effective in normalizing level of symptoms.