The image is unsettling, but more disturbing is the first paragraph, which tells us about “one ancillary benefit” of research carried out by Charles A. Nelson III at Harvard. Nelson evidently outfoxed a Boston car salesman by reading his facial expressions and discovering that he was bluffing. (When was the last time you figured out that a car salesman was “bluffing”? Did you have to watch his eye movements and facial features to figure it out?)
I suppose that research of this kind might be able to tell us about the workings of the child’s mind, but I wonder exactly to what end these children are being fitted with plastic-sponge sensors. And what about the question of consent? “Parents receive a nominal $10 fee, and each child receives a toy.”
http://www.boston.com/news/science/artic…
You’re right, they shouldn’t be experimenting with children this way. Why not? Because it’s easier to study why people have certain facial expressions by being less invasive and less directly involved with causing those facial expressions. For example, why not take thousands of pictures of children and study those expressions on their faces? Something is wrong with this study, and I would stop it if I could. Never bring a child to a lab with a closed study that excludes parents from the room(s) where the study takes place.