title: No Own-Age Advantage in Children's Recognition of Emotion on Prototypical Faces of Different Ages.
abstract: We test whether there is an own-age advantage in emotion recognition using prototypical younger child, older child and adult faces displaying emotional expressions. Prototypes were created by averaging photographs of individuals from 6 different age and sex categories (male 5-8 years, male 9-12 years, female 5-8 years, female 9-12 years, adult male and adult female), each posing 6 basic emotional expressions. In the study 5-8 year old children (n = 33), 9-13 year old children (n = 70) and adults (n = 92) labelled these expression prototypes in a 6-alternative forced-choice task. There was no evidence that children or adults recognised expressions better on faces from their own age group. Instead, child facial expression prototypes were recognised as accurately as adult expression prototypes by all age groups. This suggests there is no substantial own-age advantage in children's emotion recognition.
authors.affiliation: School of Experimental Psychology, University of Bristol, Bristol, United Kingdom; Medical Research Council Integrative Epidemiology Unit (MRC IEU) at the University of Bristol, Bristol, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: Sarah
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Griffiths
authors.affiliation: School of Experimental Psychology, University of Bristol, Bristol, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: Ian S
authors.initials: IS
authors.lastname: Penton-Voak
authors.affiliation: School of Experimental Psychology, University of Bristol, Bristol, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: Chris
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Jarrold
authors.affiliation: School of Experimental Psychology, University of Bristol, Bristol, United Kingdom; Medical Research Council Integrative Epidemiology Unit (MRC IEU) at the University of Bristol, Bristol, United Kingdom; UK Centre for Tobacco and Alcohol Studies, University of Bristol, Bristol, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: Marcus R
authors.initials: MR
authors.lastname: Munafò
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000367:Age Factors; D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D004644:Emotions / Q000502:physiology*; D005149:Facial Expression; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual / Q000502:physiology*; D055815:Young Adult