The importance of emotional intensity on the recognition of facial emotions by Brazilian children

Abstract

The ability to recognize emotions in faces is essential to human interaction and occurs since childhood. Hypothesis: research using the morphing technique assume that children require greater or lesser intensity of emotional expression to perceive it. Objective: to examine the emotional recognition of faces in childhood, using a task with emotional intensity variation. Method: it was applied a Test of Facial Emotion Recognition for Children to 28 children between 7 and 11 years, of both sexes, which presented 168 faces manipulated by the morphing technique, of the six basic emotions. Results: age as a trend growth of the likelihood of success at the task; more right answers for happiness and worst performances for fear; and the emotional intensity increasing at 42% the chance of success by every unit of intensity. Conclusion: these findings are relevant because they show the recognition of emotions at different levels as a more sensitive method.