Developmental differences in perceiving arousal and valence from dynamically unfolding emotional expressions.

ABSTRACT: The development of emotion perception has predominantly been studied using static, unimodal stimuli featuring the faces of young adults. Most findings indicate a processing advantage for positive emotions in children (positivity bias) and a negativity bias in adults, although these results are usually task-dependent. We created a new stimulus database comprising digital avatars from four age groups, dynamically expressing happiness, happy-surprise, anger, and sadness in visual (face only) and visual-verbal (face and voice) conditions. To determine whether previously found biases would re-emerge with this new database, we tested the arousal and valence perception of positive and negative emotions in 6- and 7-year-old children and young adults. Our results revealed high correlations between

SUBMITTER: Tsenkova N 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12333977 | biostudies-literature | 2025

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature