At what age did you connect emotion to facial expressions?

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I remember when I was 6 in first grade, they had us do a series of drawings with emotions and facial expressions and I readily identified with that. One of the faces were labeled with the word "Happy" and had a smiley face above it. I kind of wonder how an autistic person would process an exercise such as this? I occasionally hear on the forums that some people didn't realize that facial expressions communicated anything until fairly late in life (Actually, some don't seem to realize it until they come on the boards), so I'm curious if these people just didn't have these kind of lessons when they were younger or if they must've forgot about it and the facial-expression/emotional connection just wasn't intuitive enough?

So, when did you first connect facial expressions to emotions?

That said, I do seem to have some kind of "delayed processing" when it comes to processing facial expressions in real life, and I'm suspecting I miss a lot of the subtler cues.

My mum yelled at me a lot and I eventually put that facial expression together with anger. The basic expressions were easy enough to understand but the more subtle ones took some work.

I remember only learning what 'expression' meant when I was 8.

I learned pretty young, but I think it's because of "Sesame Street". They were always teaching about emotion and expression, even in sign language. To this day, whenever someone asks me to smile for a picture I look like a big goof. All teeth in an exaggerated smile, just like I was taught by the muppets.

Up to 17 or 18 I always knew the basic ones, happy, sad, angry, etc. Even my family once had a facial expressions magnet. But it wasn't till I was 20-21 I was starting to master the more advanced facial expressions or mixed facial expressions. Now, I read faces just as well as anyone else(well according to online tests) if you give me time to study the face. But brief glimpses, I dont always catch things immediately.

I was informed of this fairly early, but it didn't mean anything to me personally.

Fairly recently I started to notice the more subtle ones. I think it's from being a baby sitter of two kids with ADD. My pool of patience has also deepened tremendously, so I am more tolerant to things that really grinded my gears. (I.E. Immaturity, lying, pickyness, refusing to do what I've asked, the list goes on.)

Fairly early, perhaps at primary school age. I drew simple characters from games, like Dizzy or Mario, and copied their expressions. I also used expressions from comics, so I had more info about their context.

Sometimes I used expressions irl, but often failed somehow. For example, two boys were watching porn at IT class. I wanted to be cool and started to watch it with them using a rapist face. I looked like idiot, because they didn't use any expression afair. They made fun of me ('hey, look at him, lol').

So, remember, children: expression is one thing, knowledge how to use it is other.

How do you people remember this kind of stuff?

I've never thought about it nor do I remember.

Funnily enough, I've always been able to connect facial expression with emotion, for as long as I can remember.

Not yet able until today except it would be a fairly exaggerated picture or a description. The latter works since i can assign words like "frown" to emotions. But i can't decipher it in a face-to-face encounter or movies because there's way too much movement and restlessness associated with it.

On simple drawings? About 3 or 4. On real life people? I don't think I've ever mastered that concept. I learned to read people's "energy feilds". I can't really describe that one without getting into new age mumbo jumbo.

I've never heard of kids getting that kind of project in school, it's probably something only your school did.

Anyway myself I knew emotions were related to facial expressions for as long as I could remember. My big problem is that I don't recognize the subtleties, like the difference between frowning from concentration and frowning from anger.

I've never had any problems with it myself either as far as i know.

For anyone reading this and wondering why: Aspergers is a spectrum of symptoms - not a checklist.

I don't remember.

I'm told I didn't use more varied facial expressions to communicate at the appropriate age. Babies a few months old tend to express themselves by either smiling or crying but not much else. They don't use intentional jestures like wide-eyed staring when they want something, or pouting at you to express disappointment. This usually happens when they're a little older, but it usually occurs before complex speech develops. I didn't start making eye contact or using more diverse expressions until after I started talking. The development was not in the normal order.

I can't remember when I first understood facial expressions. For normal people the ability to interpret facial expressions develops between the ages of 6 months and 1 year. If you were a only a little delayed likely only your parents will remember it.

Last edited by marshall on 28 Oct 2011, 12:18 pm, edited 5 times in total.

around age 12