Use of 3D faces facilitates facial expression recognition in children

This study assessed whether presenting 3D face stimuli could facilitate children’s facial expression recognition. Seventy-one children aged between 3 and 6 participated in the study. Their task was to judge whether a face presented in each trial showed a happy or fearful expression. Half of the face stimuli were shown with 3D representations, whereas the other half of the images were shown as 2D pictures. We compared expression recognition under these conditions. The results showed that the use of 3D faces improved the speed of facial expression recognition in both boys and girls. Moreover, 3D faces improved boys’ recognition accuracy for fearful expressions. Since fear is the most difficult facial expression for children to recognize, the facilitation effect of 3D faces has important practical implications for children with difficulties in facial expression recognition. The potential benefits of 3D representation for other expressions also have implications for developing more realistic assessments of children’s expression recognition.