Facial emotion processing and language during early-to-middle childhood development: An event related potential study
Facial emotion processing (FEP) is critical to social cognitive ability. Developmentally, FEP rapidly improves in early childhood and continues to be fine-tuned throughout middle childhood and into adolescence. Previous research has suggested that language plays a role in the development of social c...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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Elsevier
2022-02-01
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| Series: | Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1878929321001419 |
| _version_ | 1831716200326889472 |
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| author | Felicity J. Bigelow Gillian M. Clark Jarrad A.G. Lum Peter G. Enticott |
| author_facet | Felicity J. Bigelow Gillian M. Clark Jarrad A.G. Lum Peter G. Enticott |
| author_sort | Felicity J. Bigelow |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description | Facial emotion processing (FEP) is critical to social cognitive ability. Developmentally, FEP rapidly improves in early childhood and continues to be fine-tuned throughout middle childhood and into adolescence. Previous research has suggested that language plays a role in the development of social cognitive skills, including non-verbal emotion recognition tasks. Here we investigated whether language is associated with specific neurophysiological indicators of FEP. One hundred and fourteen children (4–12 years) completed a language assessment and a FEP task including stimuli depicting anger, happiness, fear, and neutrality. EEG was used to record key event related potentials (ERPs; P100, N170, LPP at occipital and parietal sites separately) previously shown to be sensitive to faces and facial emotion. While there were no main effects of language, the P100 latency to negative expressions appeared to increase with language, while LPP amplitude increased with language for negative and neutral expressions. These findings suggest that language is linked to some early physiological indicators of FEP, but this is dependent on the facial expression. Future studies should explore the role of language in later stages of neural processing, with a focus on processes localised to ventromedial prefrontal regions. |
| first_indexed | 2024-12-21T00:34:52Z |
| format | Article |
| id | doaj.art-e17cd3a23f9a4e7ea60c74a1dffdae98 |
| institution | Directory Open Access Journal |
| issn | 1878-9293 |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2024-12-21T00:34:52Z |
| publishDate | 2022-02-01 |
| publisher | Elsevier |
| record_format | Article |
| series | Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience |
| spelling | doaj.art-e17cd3a23f9a4e7ea60c74a1dffdae982022-12-21T19:21:49ZengElsevierDevelopmental Cognitive Neuroscience1878-92932022-02-0153101052Facial emotion processing and language during early-to-middle childhood development: An event related potential studyFelicity J. Bigelow0Gillian M. Clark1Jarrad A.G. Lum2Peter G. Enticott3Correspondence to: Cognitive Neuroscience Unit, School of Psychology, Deakin University, 221 Burwood Highway, 3121 Burwood, Victoria, Australia.; Cognitive Neuroscience Unit, School of Psychology, Deakin University, Geelong, AustraliaCognitive Neuroscience Unit, School of Psychology, Deakin University, Geelong, AustraliaCognitive Neuroscience Unit, School of Psychology, Deakin University, Geelong, AustraliaCognitive Neuroscience Unit, School of Psychology, Deakin University, Geelong, AustraliaFacial emotion processing (FEP) is critical to social cognitive ability. Developmentally, FEP rapidly improves in early childhood and continues to be fine-tuned throughout middle childhood and into adolescence. Previous research has suggested that language plays a role in the development of social cognitive skills, including non-verbal emotion recognition tasks. Here we investigated whether language is associated with specific neurophysiological indicators of FEP. One hundred and fourteen children (4–12 years) completed a language assessment and a FEP task including stimuli depicting anger, happiness, fear, and neutrality. EEG was used to record key event related potentials (ERPs; P100, N170, LPP at occipital and parietal sites separately) previously shown to be sensitive to faces and facial emotion. While there were no main effects of language, the P100 latency to negative expressions appeared to increase with language, while LPP amplitude increased with language for negative and neutral expressions. These findings suggest that language is linked to some early physiological indicators of FEP, but this is dependent on the facial expression. Future studies should explore the role of language in later stages of neural processing, with a focus on processes localised to ventromedial prefrontal regions.http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1878929321001419Facial emotion processingLanguageEvent-related potentialsEarly-to-middle childhood |
| spellingShingle | Felicity J. Bigelow Gillian M. Clark Jarrad A.G. Lum Peter G. Enticott Facial emotion processing and language during early-to-middle childhood development: An event related potential study Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience Facial emotion processing Language Event-related potentials Early-to-middle childhood |
| title | Facial emotion processing and language during early-to-middle childhood development: An event related potential study |
| title_full | Facial emotion processing and language during early-to-middle childhood development: An event related potential study |
| title_fullStr | Facial emotion processing and language during early-to-middle childhood development: An event related potential study |
| title_full_unstemmed | Facial emotion processing and language during early-to-middle childhood development: An event related potential study |
| title_short | Facial emotion processing and language during early-to-middle childhood development: An event related potential study |
| title_sort | facial emotion processing and language during early to middle childhood development an event related potential study |
| topic | Facial emotion processing Language Event-related potentials Early-to-middle childhood |
| url | http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1878929321001419 |
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