Individual differences in the production of emotional expressions in children during an inhibition and flexibility with different emotional content

An emotion can be defined as an episode triggered by a cause and constituted by a cognitive, motivational, somatic, expressive and subjective components. In regard with the expressive component, the literature in children has shown the effect of age and gender on the production of emotional expressions, but the effect of the content of the task has been omitted from the analysis. The aim of this quantitative study is to describe the emotional expressions of 54 children from 4 to 8 years old during an inhibition and flexibility Stroop-like task with and without emotional content; and analyze de effect of age, gender and content of the task in the production of emotional expressions. The results show that the most frequent expressions were Mouth and Touches; and the modulating effect of age/schooling, gender and content of the task on the production of emotional expressions...