Recognition of facial emotions across the lifespan: 8-year-olds resemble older adults

Abstract

On standard emotion recognition tasks with relatively long or unlimited stimuli durations, recognition improves as children grow older, whereas older adults are worse than young adults. Crucially, it was unknown (a) how older adults compare to age groups below young adulthood and (b) whether children can recognize emotions at shorter durations, with short durations likely common in real life. We compared emotion recognition in 5-year-olds, 8-year-olds, young adults and older adults at very brief durations (50 ms, 250 ms) as well as standard unlimited durations. Eight-year-olds were better than 5-year-olds, young adults than all groups, and there was a striking similarity between 8-year-olds and older adults, providing the first clear indication that older adults' recognition abilities are equivalent to that of an 8-year-old at all durations. Emotion recognition was above chance on all emotions and durations among the three older age groups and on most stimuli for 5-year-olds.