Why do young children struggle to grasp the emotions behind adult facial expressions? A study led by Xie Wanze of Peking University and Professor Seth Pollak from the University of Wisconsin sheds light on this developmental shift.

The research reveals that between the ages of 5 and 10, children begin to move beyond instinctive reactions to facial cues and start relying more on learned understanding to interpret emotions.

Kids use more than faces

Interpreting facial emotions is essential for social connection, but children often misread them. Earlier studies suggested that kids gradually move from simple positive or negative assessments to nuanced emotion recognition.

But this new study shows that children don’t rely solely on visual cues. Instead, their developing brains combine perceptual data with conceptual insights shaped by culture, language, and experience.

Even young children start to build emotional concepts through stories, labels, and social situations.

Testing brain and behavior

The researchers used a three-part experiment on children aged 5 to 10. First, they measured spontaneous brain responses using a visual EEG task. Even the youngest group could distinguish different emotional expressions – happiness, anger, sadness, and fear.

Their brains reacted more strongly to shifts between these emotions, confirming early discrimination ability.

Second, a conceptual word-emotion rating task revealed that older children showed clearer, more complex emotional associations.

They viewed happiness as increasingly distinct from negative emotions and began grouping negative emotions like anger and fear more closely.

How children’s brains process emotions

The team found that perceptual and conceptual abilities both contribute to emotion judgment, but not equally. Younger kids rely more on what they see. As they grow, they shift toward what they’ve learned.

This aligns with the theory of constructed emotion, which proposes that emotional understanding relies more on concepts than raw feelings over time.

The study used Representational Similarity Analysis and statistical modeling to track this transition.

The analysis revealed that conceptual knowledge predicts emotional accuracy better in older children and adults. In contrast, perceptual discrimination plays a stronger role in younger kids.

Behavior shows emotion growth

In behavior-based sorting and matching tasks, younger children showed clear struggles. They often sorted emotions broadly – positive vs. negative – without grasping nuances.

Older children were more precise, identifying subtle differences between similar expressions like fear and anger.

Interestingly, these two tasks revealed different strengths. The sorting task depended more on labels and categories. The matching task leaned on visual cues. This shows how children’s emotion understanding may vary based on how they are asked to respond.

Children’s emotions become more complex

As children grow, they not only get better at telling faces apart but also begin to understand emotional complexity.

With age, children grasp that anger and fear may share traits or appear together in certain situations. This reflects a maturing emotional framework where emotions are not just labels but dynamic states tied to context and culture.

Children learn that the same expression may mean different things in different situations. This flexibility marks the rise of true emotional reasoning.

Helping children understand emotions

This research has practical value. It suggests that helping children grow emotionally means more than showing them faces.

Teaching emotional language, using stories, and helping them understand context can build strong conceptual knowledge.

Children who gain these tools are more likely to manage emotions, understand others, and thrive in social settings. The study supports using both visual and conceptual strategies in emotional education, tailored to age and developmental stage.

A new perspective

The study from Peking University and University of Wisconsin reminds us that emotion understanding is not fixed. It evolves through exposure, language, and thought. While a child may first recognize a smile, they later learn that not every smile means happiness.

As one grows older, it becomes clear that knowing how someone feels takes more than just looking – it requires thinking. This research shows how that journey unfolds, step by step, in every child’s mind, shaped by experience, culture, language, and social learning.

Over time, children learn that emotions are not fixed or universal – they depend on situations, relationships, and context. What begins as a simple reaction to a face slowly becomes a deeper understanding of human feelings and how they work in real life.

The study is published in the journal Nature Communications.

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