Department of Developmental Psychology, Justus Liebig University Giessen, 35394 Gießen, Germany.
Neuromotor Behavior Lab, Department of Sport Science, Justus Liebig University Giessen, 35394 Gießen, Germany.
J Exp Child Psychol. 2023 Nov;235:105713. doi: 10.1016/j.jecp.2023.105713. Epub 2023 Jun 16.
Most child studies on emotion perception used faces and speech as emotion stimuli, but little is known about children's perception of emotions conveyed by body movements, that is, emotional body language (EBL). This study aimed to investigate whether processing advantages for positive emotions in children and negative emotions in adults found in studies on emotional face and term perception also occur in EBL perception. We also aimed to uncover which specific movement features of EBL contribute to emotion perception from interactive dyads compared with noninteractive monads in children and adults. We asked 5-year-old children and adults to categorize happy and angry point-light displays (PLDs), presented as pairs (dyads) and single actors (monads), in a button-press task. By applying representational similarity analyses, we determined intra- and interpersonal movement features of the PLDs and their relation to the participants' emotional categorizations. Results showed significantly higher recognition of happy PLDs in 5-year-olds and of angry PLDs in adults in monads but not in dyads. In both age groups, emotion recognition depended significantly on kinematic and postural movement features such as limb contraction and vertical movement in monads and dyads, whereas in dyads recognition also relied on interpersonal proximity measures such as interpersonal distance. Thus, EBL processing in monads seems to undergo a similar developmental shift from a positivity bias to a negativity bias, as was previously found for emotional faces and terms. Despite these age-specific processing biases, children and adults seem to use similar movement features in EBL processing.
大多数关于情绪感知的儿童研究都使用面部表情和言语作为情绪刺激，但对于儿童对身体运动所传达的情绪（即情感肢体语言，EBL）的感知知之甚少。本研究旨在调查在情绪面孔和术语感知研究中发现的儿童对积极情绪和成人对消极情绪的处理优势是否也存在于 EBL 感知中。我们还旨在揭示与非互动的单一体相比，互动的双人组中 EBL 的哪些特定运动特征有助于儿童和成人的情绪感知。我们要求 5 岁的儿童和成人在按钮按压任务中对快乐和愤怒的点光显示（PLD）进行分类，这些 PLD 以双人组和单人的形式呈现。通过应用代表性相似性分析，我们确定了 PLD 的内在和人际运动特征及其与参与者情绪分类的关系。结果表明，在单人组中，5 岁儿童对快乐的 PLD 的识别率显著高于对愤怒的 PLD 的识别率，但在双人组中则不然。在这两个年龄组中，情绪识别都显著依赖于运动学和姿势运动特征，例如单人组和双人组中的肢体收缩和垂直运动，而在双人组中，识别还依赖于人际接近度测量，例如人际距离。因此，与情感面孔和术语一样，单人 EBL 处理似乎也经历了从正性偏见到负性偏见的类似发展转变。尽管存在这些年龄特异性的处理偏见，但儿童和成人在 EBL 处理中似乎使用相似的运动特征。
