The effects of sexual difference and aging on facial expression recognition

In this study, we examined the effects of sexual difference and aging on facial expression recognition by using a group test of expression recognition. This test evaluated the accuracy and the speed of facial expression recognition. The test consisted of two tasks: one was to look at a picture of a facial expression and select the appropriate emotion term (data-driven processing task), and the other was to look at an emotion term and select the picture of the facial expression which best expressed that emotion (conceptually-driven processing task). Experiments 1 and 2 showed neither a repetition effect nor an order effect of tasks in this test. Experiment 3 showed that females were faster than males in recognizing facial expressions, but there were no sexual differences in the accuracy of facial expression recognition, and that aging caused a gradual decline in expression recognition