Facial expressions and young childrens ability to decode their meaning

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Facial expressions and young childrens ability
to decode their meaning

• Katharine Bailey

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Context

• Emotional intelligence
• The capacity to accurately perceive emotions
• The capacity to use emotions to facilitate
  thinking
• The capacity to understand emotional meanings
• The capacity to manage emotions
• (Salovey and Mayer, 1990)

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Facial expressions

• Humans are highly skilled at decoding facial
  expressions
• Infants can differentiate between happy and sad
  expressions at 10-12 months
• Evolutionary function (e.g. snarling)
• Evolved ability to use the skill for complex
  social functioning
• Honest emotional states
• Social manipulation

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Basic emotions model

• 6 basic emotions
• Fear
• Happiness
• Sadness
• Anger
• Disgust
• Surprise
• Evidence for basic emotions includes
  cross-cultural studies and work with blind
  children

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Relevance to education

• QCA guidance for the Foundation Stage
• Emphases importance of successful emotional
  development to provide pupils with the best
  opportunity for success in life, including
  academic attainment
• Is emotional intelligence related to wider
  success including performance in school?
• Can individual differences be identified with a
  view to remediating deficits?

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PIPS-Faces

• Quick and simple objective assessment
• Computer-delivered
• Adaptive
• Intended to identify those with deficits
• Remediation advice

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Remediation

• Interventions are offered
• Transporters (www.transporters.tv)
• Emotion Trainer (www.emotiontrainer.co.uk)

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Further work

• Extending to adults
• Facial decoding impairments found in
• Non-clinical social anxiety
• Schizophrenia
• Alcohol dependence
• Pro-social behaviour
• Extend scale to encompass complex emotions
• People with Asperger Syndrome can generally
  decode the 6 basic emotions

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Contact

• Kate.Bailey_at_cem.dur.ac.uk