Dataset from: Development of implicit and explicit attentional modulation of the processing of social cues conveyed by faces and bodies in children and adolescents

Emotions and sex of other people shape the way we interact in the social environment. Indeed, the influence of these dimensions on cognitive processing is recognized as a highly conditional phenomenon. While much of the research on the topic focused on adults, less evidence is available for the pediatric population. The present study aimed at examining the development of the modulation of attention control on emotion and sex processing using facial and body expressions in children and adolescents (age range 8-16 years old). In Experiment 1a, participants performed a Flanker task (probing space-based attention) in which they had to indicate either the emotion (happy/fearful) or the sex of the target stimulus while ignoring the distracting stimuli at the side. We found evidence for intrusion of the sex, but not the emotion, of the stimuli during both sex and emotion recognition tasks, thus both at an explicit (i.e., task relevant) and implicit (i.e., task irrelevant) level. A control experiment consisting of an emotional Flanker task confirmed that, in contrast with previous findings in adults, emotion did not modulate attention control in children and adolescents even when task relevant (Experiment 1b). In Experiment 2 participants performed a same-or-different judgment task (probing feature-based attention) in which they were asked to indicate whether the central stimulus matched the lateral for emotion or sex. Results showed that emotional features exerted an implicit influence during sex judgements; likewise, sex features intruded on the processing of both faces and bodies during emotion judgments. Finally, Experiment 3 was conducted to explore the development of the explicit attention modulation exerted by the sex dimension on the processing of faces and bodies. To this aim, participants performed a Flanker task in which they were asked to recognize the sex of faces and bodies. The results indicated that, while younger participants showed a task-relevant influence of sexual features when processing faces, older participants showed such influence in processing bodies. These findings point to a greater attentional modulation exerted by sex, as compared to emotion, during social processing in children and adolescents and suggest a developmental trend of the saliency of facial and bodily cues for the perception of others’ sex.他人的情绪与性别会塑造我们在社会环境中的互动模式。事实上，上述两类维度对认知加工的影响被认为是一种高度依赖情境的现象。目前该领域的多数研究均以成人为对象，针对儿科人群（pediatric population）的相关证据则较为匮乏。本研究旨在考察儿童与青少年（年龄范围8~16岁）在基于面部与身体表情的情绪及性别加工中，注意控制调控机制的发展特点。在实验1a中，被试完成侧翼任务（Flanker task，探测基于空间的注意（space-based attention））：任务要求被试忽略两侧的干扰刺激，仅对中央靶刺激的情绪（快乐/恐惧）或性别进行判断。结果发现，无论在性别判断还是情绪判断任务中，刺激的性别均会产生干扰效应，而情绪则无此现象，即该干扰效应同时存在于外显（任务相关维度）与内隐（任务无关维度）加工层面。后续的情绪侧翼任务控制实验证实，与既往成人研究结果不同，在儿童与青少年群体中，即便情绪维度为任务相关，其也不会对注意控制产生调控作用（实验1b）。实验2中，被试完成异同判断任务（探测基于特征的注意（feature-based attention））：任务要求被试判断中央靶刺激与两侧刺激在情绪或性别维度上是否匹配。结果显示，在性别判断任务中，情绪特征会产生内隐干扰效应；同理，在情绪判断任务中，性别特征也会对面部与身体表情的加工产生侵入性影响。最后，本研究开展实验3以探究性别维度对面部与身体表情加工产生的外显注意调控机制的发展规律。为此，被试完成侧翼任务，仅需对靶刺激的性别进行判断。结果表明，年轻组被试在加工面部表情时会受到任务相关性别特征的影响，而年长组被试的该效应则出现在身体表情加工过程中。上述研究结果表明，在儿童与青少年的社会加工过程中，相较于情绪维度，性别维度会引发更强的注意调控效应，同时也提示了他人性别知觉的面部与身体线索显著性的发展趋势。