Abstract
The author’s purposewas to examine children’s recognition of emotional facialexpressions, by comparing two types of stimulus: photographs and drawings.The author aimed to investigate whether drawings could be considered asa more evocative material than photographs, as a function of age and emotion.Five- and 7-year-old childrenwere presented with photographs and drawingsdisplaying facial expressions of 4 basic emotions (i.e., happiness, sadness,anger, and fear) and were asked to perform a matching task by pointing to theface corresponding to the target emotion labeled by the experimenter. Thephotographswe usedwere selected fromthe Radboud FacesDatabase and thedrawings were designed on the basis of both the facial components involvedin the expression of these emotions and the graphic cues children tend to usewhen asked to depict these emotions in their own drawings. Our results showthat drawings are better recognized than photographs, for sadness, anger,and fear (with no difference for happiness, due to a ceiling effect). And thatthe difference between the 2 types of stimuli tends to be more important for5-year-olds compared to 7-year-olds. These results are discussed in view of theirimplications, both for future research and for practical application.