Are children actually inexpert in processing of facial information? comparison of perception, recognition and recall of facial identity and facial expression in children, preadolescentes, and adults

Abstract

The present study aimed to investigate changes in facial information processing that occur with age. To achieve this, we compared the performance of 73 children aged between 3 and 12 years old, divided into three age groups (3 - 5 years, 6 - 8 years, and 9 - 12 years), and 30 adults in tasks involving perception and recall of facial identity and expression. The results indicate that there is an increase in both perception and memory with age, which stabilizes between 9 and 12 years old, at which point children would achieve similar results to adults. Furthermore, it is observed that holistic/configura-tional processing improves as age increases. When comparing emotions, happiness was found to be the easiest emotion to recognize at all ages, while anger was the least well-recognized. Despite the age-related improvement, the results of this study indicate that school-aged children recognize emotions of fear and neutral faces better than adults.