Perceiving arousal and valence in facial expressions: Differences between children and adults |
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Authors: | Michael Vesker Daniela Bahn Franziska Degé Christina Kauschke Gudrun Schwarzer |
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Affiliation: | 1. Faculty 06 Psychology and Sports Science, Department of Developmental Psychology, Justus-Liebig-Universit?t Gie?en, Giessen, GermanyMichael.Vesker@psychol.uni-giessen.de;3. Institut für Germanistische Sprachwissenschaft, Klinische Linguistik, Philipps-Universit?t Marburg, Marburg, Germany;4. Faculty 06 Psychology and Sports Science, Department of Developmental Psychology, Justus-Liebig-Universit?t Gie?en, Giessen, Germany |
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Abstract: | Arousal and valence have long been studied as the two primary dimensions for the perception of emotional stimuli such as facial expressions. Prior correlational studies that tested emotion perception along these dimensions found broad similarities between adults and children. However, few studies looked for direct differences between children and adults in these dimensions beyond correlation. We tested 9-year-old children and adults on rating positive and negative facial stimuli based on emotional arousal and valence. Despite high significant correlations between children’s and adults’ ratings, our findings also showed significant differences between children and adults in terms of rating values: Children rated all expressions as significantly more positive than adults in valence. Children also rated positive emotions as more arousing than adults. Our results show that although perception of facial emotions along arousal and valence follows similar patterns in children and adults, some differences in ratings persist, and vary by emotion type. |
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Keywords: | Faces emotion perception arousal valence |
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