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. 2014 Aug 21;9(8):e105418.
doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0105418. eCollection 2014.

Facial expression training optimises viewing strategy in children and adults

Petra M J Pollux  1 , Sophie Hall  2 , Kun Guo  1
Affiliations

Facial expression training optimises viewing strategy in children and adults

Petra M J Pollux et al. PLoS One. .

Abstract

This study investigated whether training-related improvements in facial expression categorization are facilitated by spontaneous changes in gaze behaviour in adults and nine-year old children. Four sessions of a self-paced, free-viewing training task required participants to categorize happy, sad and fear expressions with varying intensities. No instructions about eye movements were given. Eye-movements were recorded in the first and fourth training session. New faces were introduced in session four to establish transfer-effects of learning. Adults focused most on the eyes in all sessions and increased expression categorization accuracy after training coincided with a strengthening of this eye-bias in gaze allocation. In children, training-related behavioural improvements coincided with an overall shift in gaze-focus towards the eyes (resulting in more adult-like gaze-distributions) and towards the mouth for happy faces in the second fixation. Gaze-distributions were not influenced by the expression intensity or by the introduction of new faces. It was proposed that training enhanced the use of a uniform, predominantly eyes-biased, gaze strategy in children in order to optimise extraction of relevant cues for discrimination between subtle facial expressions.

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Conflict of interest statement

Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Accuracy: Proportion correct responses (% correct) as a function of Training (S1 = Session 1, S2 = Session 2, S3 = Session 3, S4-trained = Session 4, trained faces, S4-new = Session 4, new faces), Emotion (Fearful, Happy or Sad) and Intensity (0, 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60 or 100%) and Age-group (Adults and Children).
Figure 2
Figure 2. Response Times (RT) in milliseconds (ms) for Adults and children as a function of Training Session.
Figure 3
Figure 3. Total number of fixations made on average during face viewing (Nr Fix) as a function of Training and Emotion.
Figure 4
Figure 4. Average Proportions Viewing Time (considering all fixations during face-viewing) as a function of Training session, ROI (Region of Interest), Emotion and Age-group.
Figure 5
Figure 5. Average Proportions Viewing Time (second fixation only) as a function of Training session, ROI, Emotion and Age-group.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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