Overall, the results revealed that 6-year-old children showed more sensitivity to discriminate between high and low intensity expressions than 5-year-olds. Furthermore, 4- to 10-year-olds and 12-year-olds identified emotions presented with a high intensity better than those with a low intensity, while no differences in the adult group were observed. Similarly, Gao and Maurer [ 23] reported that 5- to 7-year-olds, were significantly less sensitive than adults to lower emotion intensity expressions, reaching adult performances at age 10.

Emotional experience was induced by way of two different tasks, allowing us to measure emotional intensity, arousal, and granularity scores (see Analysis section). Emotion Differentiation Task Fujimura, T., Sato, W., & Suzuki, N. (2010). Facial expression arousal level modulates facial mimicry. International Journal of Psychophysiology, 76(2), 88–92. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijpsycho.2010.02.008. Sonnemans, J., & Frijda, N. H. (1994). The structure of subjective emotional intensity. Cognition and Emotion, 8(4), 329–350. https://doi.org/10.1080/02699939408408945. Roccas, S., Klar, Y., & Liviatan, I. (2006). The paradox of group-based guilt: Modes of national identification, conflict vehemence, and reactions to the in-group’s moral violations. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 91, 698–711. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.91.4.698.

Publisher’s Note

Overall, the results showed a significant improvement in face expression recognition with age for the three tasks. More specifically, the 5-year-olds had lower performances on the three tasks than the 6-year-olds, then a linear improvement from age 6 to adulthood was observed. A different developmental pattern for the emotion matching task was observed, showing that the children aged 4, 6, and 7 had significantly lower performances than on emotion identification and FDT. Finally, the 5-year-olds performed better on identification than matching and FDT, but no difference between emotion matching and FDT was observed. The differences among the three tasks disappeared from age 8 to adulthood. The absence of difference between identification and FDT could be explained by the task condition. In both tasks the emotion expression was named by the experimenter and the participants had to choose the corresponding expression among three faces (identification task) or among three labeled propositions made by the experimenter (FDT). According to the literature, success on these two tasks depends more on semantic representation, which develops early, while matching facial expressions depends more on visual-perception processing, which takes a longer maturation course [ 4, 7, 10]. Understand what it means to live with emotional sensitivity and intense feelings- Debunk the myths and stereotypes about this trait Bradley, M. M., Greenwald, M. K., Petry, M. C., & Lang, P. J. (1992). Remembering pictures: Pleasure and arousal in memory. Journal of Experimental Psychology. Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 18(2), 379. Cuthbert, B. N., Schupp, H. T., Bradley, M. M., Birbaumer, N., & Lang, P. J. (2000). Brain potentials in affective picture processing: Covariation with autonomic arousal and affective report. Biological Psychology, 52(2), 95–111. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0301-0511(99)00044-7.

Emotional intensity is not an illness or a problem to be solved, but a unique personal trait, a gift in its own right. This book is for you if: of Biological Psychology and Affective Science, Faculty of Human Sciences, University of Potsdam, Potsdam, Germany This book is a sequel to the last. The tone of this book is more direct. It focuses a bit more on relationships- both in love and at work. Topics covered include low self-esteem, family conflicts, loneliness, complex work challenges, and what to do in times of emotional crisis. There will also be actionable exercises for you to put theory into practice. We observed significant associations between self-report measures of interoceptive sensibility and emotional conceptualization. Specifically, self-report measures of interoceptive (in)accuracy were related to scales measuring (in)accuracy or clarity of detecting emotional states, convening in a common factor labeled Sensibility. Moreover, scales assessing how often attentional resources are deployed to bodily signals were related to a variety of self-report measures that assess the amount of attentional resources devoted to the emotions of an individual, overlapping in a factor labeled Monitoring.Do people sometimes describe you as emotionally intense or oversensitive? Do you often feel overwhelmed or anxious in the fact of a world which is loud, fast-moving and sometimes uncaring? The Monitoring factor reflects a general tendency to devote attentional resources to the internal physiological and emotional states of an individual. The role of selective and executive attention is crucial in the construction and experience of emotions ( Barrett, 2017a; Smith et al., 2019). Which aspect of the ongoing processing the attention is deployed to, e.g., either to the bodily changes, or the surrounding environment, may have a strong influence on the interpretation of the current state of an individual ( Barrett et al., 2004). Kensinger, E. A., & Schacter, D. L. (2006). Processing emotional pictures and words: Effects of valence and arousal. Cognitive, Affective, & Behavioral Neuroscience, 6(2), 110–126. https://doi.org/10.3758/CABN.6.2.110.

According to the theory of constructed emotions ( Barrett, 2017a, b), accurately identifying the actual internal state, either emotional or physiological, may activate more accurate predictions. This, in turn, can lead to better regulation of the available resources and help to prepare more adequate actions that favor the maintenance of homeostasis. For instance, if someone can accurately identify and differentiate between hunger or sadness, a series of more precise predictions may become accessible. These predictions would allow the person to act upon their needs or feelings and produce specific actions that lead to the ceasing of hunger or sadness, like getting some food or calling a close friend in search of support.Imi Lo has received multiple awards and scholarships, including the Australian Government Endeavour Award, the HSBC Social Work Scholarship, and a Postgraduate Scholarship for Buddhist Studies.

Our mediation analyses showed that the link between age and the global emotion recognition score was mediated by the ability to identify a low intensity expression. Although age seems to have a more direct impact on the emotion recognition score, our results suggest that the ability to attribute low intensity acts as a complementary mediator between age and the global emotion expression recognition score during development ( Figure 1). In contrast, this is not the case for the high intensity level ( Figure 2). Further analysis also showed that the ability to attribute low intensity acts as a complementary mediator between age and each of the emotion recognition tasks (identification and matching), but these relations were not mediated by the ability to attribute high intensity expressions (see Supplementary Material). These results may suggest that the recognition of intense expression could be based on more global face processing that develop earlier, while ability to detect more subtle changes in face expressions demand more precise processing. Such an ability may help to distinguish between emotions that share some physical features (e.g., the eyes for fear vs. surprise) that are recognized later, but also to perceive a variation of expressions of the same emotion (e.g., mouth for happy) allowing recognition and understanding of their meaning (e.g., very happy/little happy). Inferring subtle changes in face emotion expressions depends on highly efficient visual-perception processing that has a longer developmental trend [ 55] and is dissociated from processes involved in the recognition and labeling of emotion expressions [ 27, 28, 29]. Furthermore, different neuronal networks respond to variation in emotion intensity compared with changes in emotion category [ 27, 56], which progressively mature with age, improving the ability to identify more complex face emotion cues [ 4, 57]. Thus, a similar pattern of performances for the recognition of emotion expressions and sensitivity for their intensity are observed in adolescents and adults, as opposed to children [ 26, 32]. Emotional intensity was taken as the intensity of the emotional word with the highest rating for each trial, which was averaged across trials. Emotional arousal was extracted by averaging the experienced arousal across trials in the ED task. Because intensity and arousal scores were negatively skewed ( skewness>−0.79), they were normalized using the following formula: sqrt(max(S + 1) – S), where S refers to the mean intensity/arousal scores. Normal distribution was achieved after applying this transformation (0.06 < skewness< 0.09). As identification and matching tasks assessed the emotion recognition of five same-face expressions, a repeated-measure ANOVA was conducted with the age groups as a between-subject factor (age 4 to 12 and adults), task (Identification vs. Matching) and emotion (happiness, sadness, anger, surprise versus neutral) as within-subject factors. The factor scores did not differentiate between interoceptive sensibility and emotional conceptualization scales. Instead, they revealed overlapping variance between measures of both components. Factor 1 mostly comprised scales measuring sensibility toward perceiving physiological changes and emotion and was named “ Sensibility.” Factor 2 consisted of scales that are related to perceptions about attentional resources devoted to physiological and emotional aspects and was labeled “ Monitoring.” Table 2 shows the loading scores from each of the scales. Relation Between Principal Component Analysis Factors and Emotional Intensity and Granularity Emotion Differentiation (ED) Task

Acknowledgments

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