Emotional identification of facial expressions refers to the identification of emotional types of expressions by observing subtle changes in the faces of the target person based on the subjects’ own cognitive level and experience. In this study, an improved rapid emotion recognition paradigm(Brief Affect Recognition Test, BART) was used to test the developmental characteristics of facial emotion recognition in children aged 6-15 (132 boys and 135 girls). One of the six facial expressions (anger, happiness, disgust, fear, sadness or surprise) is displayed on the monitor, and the subjects were asked to identify the emotional type as well as choose the corresponding word for the image.The main findings of this study are as follows. Firstly, the accuracy of children's facial expression recognition was modulated by age. The accuracy of recognizing facial expressions saw an overall increasing trend and leveled off at the age of 10-11. The correct recognition of different types of facial expressions showed different turning points in terms of the overall trend. The turning point for surprise, sadness and anger was at the age of 8-9, and the turning point for happiness, disgust and fear was at the age of 10-11. Secondly, reaction time to facial expressions was modulated by age. Children's reaction time to facial expressions generally showed a downward trend. The reaction time to different types of facial expressions had the same turning point and it began to level off at the age of 12-13. Thirdly, the accuracy of children's facial expression recognition was modulated by gender. In general, girls generated more accurate answers than boys. The accuracy of recognizing surprise, happiness and anger saw gender differences in terms of the turning points: 1) for boys, the turning point of correctly recognizing the expression of surprise was 8-9 years old, the turning point for recognizing happiness was 10-11 years old, and the turning point for angry was 12-13 years old; 2) for girls, the turning point of correctly recognizing the expression of surprise was at the age of 10-11, correct recognition of happiness leveled off at the age of 6-15, and the turning point for anger was at the age of 8-9. The results of this study yielded instructive implications for the understanding of the developmental characteristics regarding children's ability to recognize facial expressions.
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