An examination of referential and affect specificity with five emotions in infancy

Martin, Nicole; Maza, Lindey; McGrath, Savannah J.; Phelps, Amber E.

doi:10.1016/j.infbeh.2014.04.009

Cited by 14 publications

(20 citation statements)

References 50 publications

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“…The researchers found that 17-month-old infants played less with a toy labeled with fear than a toy labeled with sadness, and showed more facial concern in response to the sad display than the fear display; 13-month-old infants showed no such differential responding between emotions. A follow-up study found similar age differences in responding, with older infants touching the target toy more than a distractor toy in the surprise and happy conditions, but touching the distractor toy more in the anger and fear conditions (Martin, Maza, McGrath, & Phelps, 2014). …”

Section: Emotion and Emotional Developmentmentioning

confidence: 89%

Infant differential behavioral responding to discrete emotions.

Walle¹,

Reschke²,

Camras³

et al. 2017

Emotion

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Emotional communication regulates the behaviors of social partners. Research on individuals' responding to others' emotions typically compares responses to a single negative emotion compared with responses to a neutral or positive emotion. Furthermore, coding of such responses routinely measure surface level features of the behavior (e.g., approach vs. avoidance) rather than its underlying function (e.g., the goal of the approach or avoidant behavior). This investigation examined infants' responding to others' emotional displays across 5 discrete emotions: joy, sadness, fear, anger, and disgust. Specifically, 16-, 19-, and 24-month-old infants observed an adult communicate a discrete emotion toward a stimulus during a naturalistic interaction. Infants' responses were coded to capture the function of their behaviors (e.g., exploration; prosocial behavior; security seeking). The results revealed a number of instances indicating that infants use different functional behaviors in response to discrete emotions. Differences in behaviors across emotions were clearest in the 24-month-old infants, though younger infants also demonstrated some differential use of behaviors in response to discrete emotions. This is the first comprehensive study to identify differences in how infants respond with goal-directed behaviors to discrete emotions. Additionally, the inclusion of a function-based coding scheme and interpersonal paradigms may be informative for future emotion research with children and adults. Possible developmental accounts for the observed behaviors and the benefits of coding techniques emphasizing the function of social behavior over their form are discussed.

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Section: Emotion and Emotional Developmentmentioning

confidence: 89%

Infant differential behavioral responding to discrete emotions.

Walle¹,

Reschke²,

Camras³

et al. 2017

Emotion

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show abstract

“…Infants' preferences for novel objects (e.g., toys) are influenced by the emotions others express while interacting with the object. If an adult responds to a novel toy with an expression of anger, fear, surprise, or happiness when interacting with it, children observing the interaction will modulate their relative preference for that toy over a neutral toy in accordance with the emotion expressed by the adult (Martin et al 2014). Our research adds to this literature by illustrating the role that social attention plays in shaping emotional responses to objects and experiences.…”

Section: Theoretical and Practical Contributionsmentioning

confidence: 73%

Hedonic Contrast Effects Are Larger When Comparisons Are Social

Morewedge

Zhu

Buechel

2018

Journal of Consumer Research

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A hedonic contrast effect occurs when comparing a stimulus to its alternatives makes it better or worse. We find that counterfactual comparisons induce larger hedonic contrast effects when they are also social comparisons. Hedonic contrast effects influence happiness with a food or wage more when another person receives its counterfactual alternative than when no person receives its counterfactual alternative. Social attention, the propensity to attend to the experiences of other people, underlies the larger hedonic contrast effects induced by social comparisons. People pay more attention to counterfactual alternatives when they are also social comparison standards, and this difference in the allocation of attention mediates the larger hedonic contrast effects that social counterfactual comparisons induce. Reducing attentional resources with cognitive load or time pressure reduces the impact of social counterfactual comparisons, and drawing attention to nonsocial counterfactual comparisons increases their impact. Social attention makes comparisons stronger when they are social.

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“…sophisticated social referencing skill set as they age [2,[17][18][19][20][21]. Martin et al [2] found that infants over 15 months of age could distinguish between emotions with the same valence and could regulate their behavior accordingly. This is referred to as affect specificity [22,23].…”

Section: Journal Of Child and Adolescent Behaviormentioning

confidence: 99%

“…We predicted that infants would reference trained mothers more than untrained mothers because of a novelty in her behavior. We also assumed that the referential behavior in the older group of infants in this study would be more influenced by maternal signaling compared to younger infants, as other studies have demonstrated a stronger social referencing response in children over 14 months of age [2,19,22], regardless of training condition.…”

Section: Journal Of Child and Adolescent Behaviormentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Natural versus Trained Maternal Expression in a Social Referencing Paradigm

Mg²,

Pollard³

et al. 2016

J Child Adolesc Behav

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Throughout the social referencing literature, mothers were used as emoters and trained to express prototypical expressions. The concern with using trained expressions is that this may not be how mothers naturally convey emotional information to their infants. Half of the mothers were trained to present prototypical vocal and emotional expressions of fear, happiness, and neutrality as they delivered a social referencing message to a toy and then allowed the infant time to interact with it. The other half were instructed to naturally convey these emotions to their infants. Untrained mothers used more affect and gestures when communicating compared to untrained mothers. Older infants touched the toy most when hearing happiness and least when hearing fear, while younger infants did the opposite. Maternal training did not have an effect on infant interaction with the toys, which suggests that training may not be a necessary component of social referencing paradigms.

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An examination of referential and affect specificity with five emotions in infancy

Cited by 14 publications

References 50 publications

Infant differential behavioral responding to discrete emotions.

Infant differential behavioral responding to discrete emotions.

Hedonic Contrast Effects Are Larger When Comparisons Are Social

Natural versus Trained Maternal Expression in a Social Referencing Paradigm

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