Finding the Angry Face in the Crowd: A Comparison Between Preadolescents and Adolescents with an Emotional Visual Search Task

The facial expression of anger is considered a salient signal of threat that elicits preferential allocation of attention as expected on the basis of an evolved module of fear. Though not explicitly stated in the model, an evolved threat -detection bias should operate across different ages. However, developmental data on such an advantage of anger with photographic stimuli is limited to preschoolers. The current study compares the speed of preadolescents to those of adolescents when detecting angry and happy faces in a visual search task with photos of 9 individuals. Angry faces were detected more efficiently compared to happy ones, across the two age groups. Additionally, for adolescents, the anger advantage was modulated by face gender. These results offer among the first evidence of an anger advantage in attention processing across development.