Dalrymple Kirsten A, Visconti di Oleggio Castello Matteo, Elison Jed T, Gobbini M Ida
Institute of Child Development, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, United States of America.
Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence in Cognition and its Disorders, University of Western Australia, Crawley, Australia.
PLoS One. 2017 Jun 15;12(6):e0179458. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0179458. eCollection 2017.
Facial identity and facial expression processing both appear to follow a protracted developmental trajectory, yet these trajectories have been studied independently and have not been directly compared. Here we investigated whether these processes develop at the same or different rates using matched identity and expression discrimination tasks. The Identity task begins with a target face that is a morph between two identities (Identity A/Identity B). After a brief delay, the target face is replaced by two choice faces: 100% Identity A and 100% Identity B. Children 5-12-years-old were asked to pick the choice face that is most similar to the target identity. The Expression task is matched in format and difficulty to the Identity task, except the targets are morphs between two expressions (Angry/Happy, or Disgust/Surprise). The same children were asked to pick the choice face with the expression that is most similar to the target expression. There were significant effects of age, with performance improving (becoming more accurate and faster) on both tasks with increasing age. Accuracy and reaction times were not significantly different across tasks and there was no significant Age x Task interaction. Thus, facial identity and facial expression discrimination appear to develop at a similar rate, with comparable improvement on both tasks from age five to twelve. Because our tasks are so closely matched in format and difficulty, they may prove useful for testing face identity and face expression processing in special populations, such as autism or prosopagnosia, where one of these abilities might be impaired.
面部身份识别和面部表情处理似乎都遵循一个漫长的发展轨迹，但这些轨迹一直是独立研究的，尚未进行直接比较。在这里，我们使用匹配的身份和表情辨别任务来研究这些过程是以相同还是不同的速度发展。身份识别任务开始时会呈现一张目标面孔，它是两个身份（身份A/身份B）之间的形态混合。短暂延迟后，目标面孔被两张选择面孔取代：100%身份A和100%身份B。5至12岁的儿童被要求挑选出与目标身份最相似的选择面孔。表情任务在形式和难度上与身份识别任务相匹配，只是目标是两种表情（愤怒/高兴，或厌恶/惊讶）之间的形态混合。同样的儿童被要求挑选出与目标表情最相似的选择面孔。年龄有显著影响，随着年龄增长，两项任务的表现都有所提高（变得更准确、更快）。两项任务的准确率和反应时间没有显著差异，也没有显著的年龄×任务交互作用。因此，面部身份识别和面部表情辨别似乎以相似的速度发展，从五岁到十二岁，两项任务都有类似的改善。由于我们的任务在形式和难度上非常匹配，它们可能被证明有助于测试特殊人群（如自闭症或面孔失认症患者）的面部身份识别和面部表情处理能力，这些人群中可能有一种能力受损。
