Cognitive shift explains children’s growing understanding of emotions

Why do young children often miss the emotions behind adult expressions? A pioneering study led by researcher Xie Wanze from Peking University's School of Psychological and Cognitive Sciences, in collaboration with professor Seth Pollak from the University of Wisconsin, reveals that the answer lies in a cognitive shift. Published in Nature Communications, their research shows how children aged 5-10 transition from merely "seeing" facial expressions to deeply understanding emotions, relying less on instinct and more on learned insight.

Background: The importance of emotion understanding

Interpreting emotions is crucial for social bonds, yet children often struggle to decode adult feelings. This process involves perceiving facial features and applying conceptual knowledge to grasp emotional meaning. The study investigates how these cognitive mechanisms develop during childhood, filling a gap in understanding the developmental trajectory of emotion recognition.

Why it matters

As children grow, their ability to navigate complex social environments depends on a refined understanding of emotions. This research offers insights into how cognitive processes develop, with potential implications for education, parenting, and interventions for children facing social-emotional challenges.

Key findings

The study explored how children process emotions through three interconnected experiments, spanning neural activity, conceptual understanding, and behavior. In the first experiment on perception, researchers used EEG frequency tagging to show that even five-year-old children could automatically differentiate between four core facial expressions - happiness, anger, fear, and sadness - through neural responses localized in the temporo-occipital region. This perceptual ability appeared stable across different age groups. The second experiment examined conceptual knowledge through a word-similarity task, revealing that older children had more nuanced emotional associations, such as linking the word "crying" to multiple emotions, an indication of developing emotional complexity. Lastly, in the behavioral study, children participated in sorting and matching tasks. Younger participants tended to categorize expressions in broad terms of positive versus negative. At the same time, older children displayed a more refined understanding by distinguishing between specific negative emotions like anger and fear.

Core insight: A cognitive shift

To integrate these findings, the team used Representational Similarity Analysis (RSA) alongside Generalized Estimating Equations (GEE) to trace the cognitive dynamics underlying emotion understanding. The results revealed a distinct developmental shift: younger children rely more heavily on perceptual cues, while older children increasingly depend on conceptual knowledge. This progression from "seeing faces" to "understanding feelings" underscores how emotional development is shaped by experience, learning, and growing cognitive sophistication throughout childhood.

Future implications 

This research highlights the dynamic interplay between perception and conceptual knowledge in children's emotional development, offering a foundation for designing age-appropriate educational and therapeutic strategies to enhance social-emotional skills.