Audiovisual emotion perception develops differently from audiovisual phoneme perception during childhood

PLoS One. 2020 Jun 18;15(6):e0234553. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0234553. eCollection 2020.

Abstract

This study investigated the developmental paths in the use of audiovisual information for the perception of emotions and phonemes by Japanese speakers. Children aged 5 to 12 years and adults aged 30 to 39 years engaged in an emotion perception task in which speakers expressed their emotions through their faces and voices, and a phoneme perception task using phonemic information in speakers' lip movements and speech sounds. Results indicated that Japanese children's judgement of emotions by using auditory information increased with increasing age, whereas the use of audiovisual information for judging phonemes remained constant with increasing age. Moreover, adults were affected by visual information more than children. We discuss whether these differences in developmental patterns are due to differential integration processes for information indicative of emotions and phonemes, as well as possible cultural / linguistic reasons for these differences.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Adult
  • Asian People
  • Child
  • Child Development*
  • Emotions*
  • Female
  • Humans
  • Japan
  • Judgment
  • Lipreading
  • Loudness Perception
  • Male
  • Phonetics*
  • Speech Acoustics
  • Speech Perception*
  • Visual Perception*

Grants and funding

This work was supported by JSPS KAKENHI (No. 15H02714 and No. 18K13124), the Scholarship Fund for Young/Women Researchers, and Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research on Innovative Areas No. 17H06345 “Construction of the Face-Body Studies in Transcultural Conditions.” The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.