Research On Interaction Between Facial Attractiveness And Expression In Preschooler's Process Of Real And Cartoon Faces

Face processing research is on the rise and expanding many research branches.In recent years,the research of facial attractiveness has occupied people's attention and become a hot topic in face processing research.Previous studies used static indicators such as symmetry,average,gender dimorphism and facial features to judge whether a face is "attractive",weakening or even ignoring the dynamic facial feature "facial expression".In fact,facial expression,as an important information of the face,can most directly express the current psychological state of the person,it conveys some important explicit or implicit information that largely determines an individual's first impression on others,thus influencing the individual's judgment of the attractiveness of the face.In addition,cartoon,as a close partner in children's life,has a long and profound influence on children's growth.Recently,the research on cartoon faces by various scholars has become an indispensable branch that can not be ignored.Therefore,this study explored the relationship between facial attractiveness of real and cartoon faces and expressions from the perspective of preschool children.There are four experiments in this study.In experiment 1,facial attractiveness was taken as an explicit factor and facial expression as an implicit factor.The task of facial attractiveness rating was applied to evaluate the attractiveness of the face under different facial expressions;in experiment 2,on the contrary,facial expression was taken as an explicit factor and facial attractiveness as an implicit factor,and facial expression judgment task was adopted to explore the influence of facial attractiveness.In experiment 3 and 4,under the basic paradigm of experiment 1 and experiment 2,eye movement technology was used to track the eye movement trajectory when children were judging facial attractiveness/facial expression,and then chose four main eye movement indexes to analyze and provide scientific explanation of the behavior experiment 1 and 2.The results are as follows:1.Facial expression had a significant impact on facial attractiveness.Negativeexpression significantly reduced the scores of facial attractiveness,while positive expression could help increase facial attractiveness.The results of real face and cartoon face were consistent;2.Facial attraction had a significant impact on the accuracy of cartoon facial expression judgment: the accuracy of high-attraction faces was significantly higher than that of low-attraction faces,however,attractiveness had no significant impact on the real face expression judgment;3.There were gender differences in children's facial processing.Girls' ability to recognize facial expression was significantly better than boys' either in real or cartoon faces;4.Boys scored significantly higher on the attractiveness of cartoon faces than real faces,suggesting that boys preferred cartoon faces;5.In the eye movement experiment,both in the task of facial attractiveness/facial expression judgment,there was no significant difference between boys and girls,and the eye movement mechanism of boys and girls in facial processing was basically the same;6.In the task of facial attractiveness/facial expression judgment,the main effect of the interest area is significant(real and cartoon faces are the same),in each interest area,children spend the longest total fixation duration time in the eye area,and the number of fixation points were higher than those of nose and mouth,indicating that the eye area occupied more attention resources;7.In the eye movement experiment,the main effect of facial expression was significant in both the task of facial attractiveness/facial expression judgment.The specific performance was that the total fixation time and the number of fixation points of positive faces in the task of face attractiveness score were higher than those of negative and neutral faces;while in the task of facial expression judgment,the total fixation time and the number of fixation points of negative faces were higher than those of positive and neutral faces(real and cartoon faces are the same).In conclusion,this study explored the relationship between facial attractiveness and facial expression,and implied that educators should avoid excessive negative facial expressions,and use more positive expressions to improve their facial attractiveness.And introducing high-attraction cartoon faces in social learning can promote children's facial discrimination ability.Provide children with real faces and high-quality cartoon faces can enhance children's interest in learning.