Emotional multisensory integration in 5- to 6-year-old children occurs early rather than late: ERP evidence

Multisensory integration of emotion is crucial for social interactions. However, existing research on emotional multisensory integration has primarily focused on adults and infants, with less attention paid to children. To explore the cognitive and neural mechanisms underlying emotional multisensory integration in children, we recorded event-related potentials from 42 children aged 5 to 6 years when they identified emotional stimuli. The emotional stimuli, including pictures, sounds, or both presented simultaneously, were randomly presented. Children were required to recognize the emotions of the stimuli. Results showed that (1) children identified audiovisual emotional stimuli faster and more accurately than visual stimuli; (2) multimodal stimuli elicited a larger N1 component than visual stimuli did, which may indicate the early development of emotional multisensory integration in children; (3) the audiovisual P2 component did not exhibit an inhibitory effect compared with visual stimuli, indicating information redundancy resulting from incomplete cognitive development in children. In conclusion, these results suggest that emotional multisensory integration in 5- to 6-year-old children occurs early rather than late.