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Poster #203 - Eye tracking during emotional recognition across the lifespan

Sat, March 23, 12:45 to 2:00pm, Baltimore Convention Center, Floor: Level 1, Exhibit Hall B

Integrative Statement

Facial emotional expressions recognition is highly relevant in social interaction, since it provides information related to emotional states, intentions, and the impact of our behavior on the other. The ability to recognize different emotions develops across lifespan, with differences in timing between emotions; happiness is the first to be recognized while fear, is well recognized until the adulthood. Where to direct the gaze plays a crucial role in the development of the facial emotion recognition. Eye tracking allows identifying specific facial areas that attracts attention during emotional recognition. The purpose of the present study was to identify the specific areas that attract attention for each emotion as a function of age.
Participants were classified into 6 groups (6, 8, 10, 12, 14 years old and adults). Eye movements were recorded through the corneal reflex detection technique. Participants observed faces with different emotional expressions (happiness, disgust, angry, fear, surprise, sadness and neutral). Five regions of interest were considered: front, eyes, nose, mouth and contour. The percentage of the total fixations for each region of interest was evaluated.
Regarding differences between emotions, adults showed a higher percentage of fixations on the eyes when recognizing surprise in comparison to happiness and disgust while the mouth attracts more fixations at happiness compared to the other emotional expressions. The higher percentage of fixations on the mouth region at happiness in the two youngest groups was found only in comparison with the neutral expression and, up to 10 years it was observed in comparison to all the emotions as it occurred in adults. The lower percentage of fixations on the nose at the surprise expression was observed in the 10 and 12 year-olds.
Age-related differences were observed in the recognition of different emotions. Adults showed higher percentage of fixations on the eyes than 6, 10, and 12 years old children in sadness, fear and surprise expressions. The percentage of fixation on the nose region at disgust was lower in the 6 old group than in the 10,12 year olds and adults; adults showed a less fixations when looking at the surprise expression in comparison to 8 and 14 year old groups. Considering the surprise expression, children with 8, 10 and 12 years showed higher percentage of fixations on the mouth region than those with 14 years and adults. Regarding to the face contour area, the youngest children had higher fixations than adults in all the emotions and, children with 8, 10 and 12 years only in disgust, surprise and fear expressions.
Results suggest that as age increases the direction of attention to specific face areas changes according to the emotion. Adults mainly examine the eyes when looking at sadness, fear and surprise expressions, and mouth in the case of happiness, which correspond to the more informative areas for the identification of those emotions. The youngest children show no preference for particular facial areas according emotions and, look to non-informative facial regions. Older children groups tend to acquire a similar attention pattern to that showed by adults.

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