Preschoolers‘ sensitivity to negative and positive emotional facial expressions: An ERP study

The study examined processing differences for facial expressions (happy, angry, or neutral) with early (P1, N170) and late (P3) event-related potentials (ERPs) in young children (N = 33). EEG was recorded while children observed sequentially presented pairs of facial expressions, which were either the same (repeated trials) or differed in their emotion (novel trials). ERP amplitude differences were further associated with parental and child measures of socio-emotional competence (emotion recognition, empathy). P1 amplitudes were increased for angry and happy as compared to neutral expressions. We furthermore detected larger P3 amplitudes for angry expressions as compared to happy or neutral expressions. Repetition effects were evident at early processing stages marked by reduced P1 amplitudes for repeated vs. novel happy expressions. N170 amplitudes were neither modulated by facial expressions nor their repetition. Taken together, negative facial expressions led to increased neural activations in later processing stages, indicative of enhanced saliency to potential threating stimuli in young children. The encoding of facial expression differences and similarities was predominantly observed during early neural stages, particularly for happy expressions. None of the repetition effects were associated with measures of socio-emotional competence.