title: Nine-year-old children use norm-based coding to visually represent facial expression.
abstract: Children are less skilled than adults at making judgments about facial expression. This could be because they have not yet developed adult-like mechanisms for visually representing faces. Adults are thought to represent faces in a multidimensional face-space, and have been shown to code the expression of a face relative to the norm or average face in face-space. Norm-based coding is economical and adaptive, and may be what makes adults more sensitive to facial expression than children. This study investigated the coding system that children use to represent facial expression. An adaptation aftereffect paradigm was used to test 24 adults and 18 children (9 years 2 months to 9 years 11 months old). Participants adapted to weak and strong antiexpressions. They then judged the expression of an average expression. Adaptation created aftereffects that made the test face look like the expression opposite that of the adaptor. Consistent with the predictions of norm-based but not exemplar-based coding, aftereffects were larger for strong than weak adaptors for both age groups. Results indicate that, like adults, children's coding of facial expressions is norm-based.
authors.affiliation: ARC Centre of Excellence in Cognition and its Disorders, School of Psychology, The University of Western Australia.
authors.forename: Nichola
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Burton
authors.forename: Linda
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Jeffery
authors.forename: Andrew L
authors.initials: AL
authors.lastname: Skinner
authors.forename: Christopher P
authors.initials: CP
authors.lastname: Benton
authors.forename: Gillian
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Rhodes
mesh_terms: D000223:Adaptation, Psychological / Q000502:physiology*; D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000367:Age Factors; D002648:Child; D002657:Child Development / Q000502:physiology*; D005145:Face; D005149:Facial Expression; D005260:Female; D005366:Figural Aftereffect / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D008960:Models, Psychological; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual / Q000502:physiology*; D012938:Social Perception; D055815:Young Adult