Correia-Caeiro Catia, Lawrence Abbey, Abdelrahman Abdelhady, Guo Kun, Mills Daniel
School of Psychology, University of Lincoln, Lincoln, Lincolnshire, UK.
School of Life Sciences, University of Lincoln, Lincoln, Lincolnshire, UK.
Dev Sci. 2023 May;26(3):e13332. doi: 10.1111/desc.13332. Epub 2022 Oct 17.
Children are often surrounded by other humans and companion animals (e.g., dogs, cats); and understanding facial expressions in all these social partners may be critical to successful social interactions. In an eye-tracking study, we examined how children (4-10 years old) view and label facial expressions in adult humans and dogs. We found that children looked more at dogs than humans, and more at negative than positive or neutral human expressions. Their viewing patterns (Proportion of Viewing Time, PVT) at individual facial regions were also modified by the viewed species and emotion, with the eyes not always being most viewed: this related to positive anticipation when viewing humans, whilst when viewing dogs, the mouth was viewed more or equally compared to the eyes for all emotions. We further found that children's labelling (Emotion Categorisation Accuracy, ECA) was better for the perceived valence than for emotion category, with positive human expressions easier than both positive and negative dog expressions. They performed poorly when asked to freely label facial expressions, but performed better for human than dog expressions. Finally, we found some effects of age, sex, and other factors (e.g., experience with dogs) on both PVT and ECA. Our study shows that children have a different gaze pattern and identification accuracy compared to adults, for viewing faces of human adults and dogs. We suggest that for recognising human (own-face-type) expressions, familiarity obtained through casual social interactions may be sufficient; but for recognising dog (other-face-type) expressions, explicit training may be required to develop competence. HIGHLIGHTS: We conducted an eye-tracking experiment to investigate how children view and categorise facial expressions in adult humans and dogs Children's viewing patterns were significantly dependent upon the facial region, species, and emotion viewed Children's categorisation also varied with the species and emotion viewed, with better performance for valence than emotion categories Own-face-types (adult humans) are easier than other-face-types (dogs) for children, and casual familiarity (e.g., through family dogs) to the latter is not enough to achieve perceptual competence.
儿童经常被其他人类和伴侣动物（如狗、猫）环绕；理解所有这些社会伙伴的面部表情对于成功的社交互动可能至关重要。在一项眼动追踪研究中，我们考察了儿童（4至10岁）如何看待和识别成年人类及狗的面部表情。我们发现，儿童注视狗的时间比注视人类的时间长，注视负面人类表情的时间比注视正面或中性人类表情的时间长。他们在各个面部区域的注视模式（注视时间比例，PVT）也会因所注视的物种和情绪而改变，眼睛并不总是被注视最多的部位：这与注视人类时的积极预期有关，而注视狗时，对于所有情绪，嘴巴被注视的程度与眼睛相同或更多。我们还发现，儿童的标签识别（情绪分类准确率，ECA）在感知效价方面比在情绪类别方面表现更好，正面人类表情比正面和负面狗表情更容易识别。当被要求自由标记面部表情时，他们表现不佳，但对人类表情的识别比对狗表情的识别表现更好。最后，我们发现年龄、性别和其他因素（如与狗的接触经历）对PVT和ECA都有一些影响。我们的研究表明，与成年人相比，儿童在观看成年人类和狗的面部时，有不同的注视模式和识别准确率。我们建议，对于识别人类（自己面部类型）的表情，通过日常社交互动获得的熟悉度可能就足够了；但对于识别狗（其他面部类型）的表情，可能需要明确的训练才能培养能力。
我们进行了一项眼动追踪实验，以研究儿童如何看待和分类成年人类及狗的面部表情
儿童的注视模式显著依赖于所注视的面部区域、物种和情绪
儿童的分类也因所注视的物种和情绪而有所不同，在效价方面的表现优于情绪类别
对于儿童来说，自己面部类型（成年人类）比其他面部类型（狗）更容易识别，而对后者仅通过日常熟悉（如通过家养宠物狗）不足以获得感知能力。
