Edition
Nicola Morgan
Walker Books
ISBN: 9781406346930
£7.99
208 pages
Who would have guessed that the ability to accurately assess the emotion in a face actually diminishes between the ages of about 11 and 16 before recovering again afterwards? This means that while most children between four and 10 and most adults between 19 and 90 can distinguish fear on an adult face, lots of teenagers can't. Where adults see fear, teens may see anger, shock, or disgust.
As it happens, it seems that adolescents use a different part of their brains when recognising facial emotions than adults do. They are more likely to lean on their amygdala (the home of the gut instinct) rather than the pre-frontal cortex (home of executive function) that adults tend to use. When you think about how much goes wrong in communications between teens, their parents, their teachers, and each other, this little titbit of information goes a long way towards explaining it.
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