Fig 1.
The figure illustrates the four phases of the study.
In the first phase (a), children were familiarized with the game. In the second phase (b), children were presented with the ostracism manipulation, in which the virtual players were pre-programmed, such that the excluder only tossed the ball once to the participant, while the includer played fairly. In the third phase (c), FM to the excluder and the includer was assessed, by displaying pictures of happy and sad facial expression of the two players. The last phase (d) of the experiment consisted of another round of the game, in which both players played fairly, and served the purpose of restoring positive feelings. The avatars in this figure are not the original images used in the study, which could not be published due to the copyright license of the stimuli from the Radboud Faces Database. The avatars were created by the authors of this study and used here for illustrative purposes only (https://getavataaars.com.
Fig 2.
Time course of standardized EMG activation of the CS (red) and ZM (blue) muscles in response to happy includer (a), happy excluder (b), sad includer (c) and sad excluder (d) in bins of 100 ms from stimulus onset (0 ms) to stimulus offset (2000 ms). The green line represents the difference score between the two muscles (ZM and CS), in which each bin represents the mean (with the standard error) amplitude over 100 ms time.
Fig 3.
Violin plots illustrating the muscle activation in the ZM (blue) and the CS (red) in response to happy and sad expressions for the includer and the excluder peer. The distribution of the data is represented by the violin shape, with larger width indicating higher value frequency. The mean of each muscle activation for each peer is represented by a plus sign, whereas the horizontal bars represent the minimum, the median and the maximum values. The whiskers represent the first and the fifth quantile. ns = non-significant; * p < .05.
Fig 4.
The figure illustrates the muscle activation in the ZM (blue) and the CS (red) muscle in the secure (a, b) and in the insecure group (c, d) for happy and sad emotion. ns = non-significant; * p < .05.