Beyond the Face: An Empirical Study of Infant Affective Configurations of Facial, Vocal, Gestural, and Regulatory Behaviors

Weinberg, M. Katherine; Tronick, Edward Z.

doi:10.2307/1131514

Cited by 279 publications

(128 citation statements)

References 5 publications

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“…The temporal association between eye constriction and mouth opening suggests that these facial actions may index a common intensity construct in both smiles and cry-faces. Similar associations have been seen for other expressive behaviors, including facial expressions, gestures, and vocalization (Weinberg & Tronick, 1994). This suggests a robust coherence in the ways infants express emotions.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 69%

Emotional expression and heart rate in high-risk infants during the face-to-face/still-face

Mattson

Ekas

Lambert

et al. 2013

Infant Behavior and Development

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In infants, eye constriction—the Duchenne marker—and mouth opening appear to index the intensity of both positive and negative facial expressions. We combined eye constriction and mouth opening that co-occurred with smiles and cry-faces (respectively, the prototypic expressions of infant joy and distress) to measure emotional expression intensity. Expression intensity and heart rate were measured throughout the Face-to-Face/Still Face (FFSF) in a sample of infants with prenatal cocaine exposure who were at risk for developmental difficulties. Smiles declined and cry-faces increased in the still-face episode, but the distribution of eye constriction and mouth opening in smiles and cry-faces did not differ across episodes of the FFSF. As time elapsed in the still face episode potential indices of intensity increased, cry-faces were more likely to be accompanied by eye constriction and mouth opening. During cry-faces there were also moderately stable individual differences in the quantity of eye constriction and mouth opening. Infant heart rate was higher during cry-faces and lower during smiles, but did not vary with intensity of expression or by episode. In sum, infants express more intense negative affect as the still-face progresses, but do not show clear differences in expressive intensity between episodes of the FFSF.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 69%

Emotional expression and heart rate in high-risk infants during the face-to-face/still-face

Mattson

Ekas

Lambert

et al. 2013

Infant Behavior and Development

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show abstract

“…Suppression of emotional responses can have generally negative emotional and social consequences, including elevated negative mood and social isolation (Gross, 2002; Szczurek et al, 2012). Furthermore, reduced emotional expression in response to infant emotional display can have profoundly disruptive effect on the infant as demonstrated with the still face paradigm (Weinberg and Tronick, 1994) and this may ultimately impact the development of the children of mothers with AN (Micali et al, 2014). Thus, these findings further highlight the need for interventions that target atypical social–emotional processing, including down-regulation of positive emotions and elevated subjective distress, in AN.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

FMRI Study of Neural Responses to Implicit Infant Emotion in Anorexia Nervosa

et al. 2017

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Difficulties in social–emotional processing have been proposed to play an important role in the development and maintenance of anorexia nervosa (AN). Few studies, thus far, have investigated neural processes that underlie these difficulties, including processing emotional facial expressions. However, the majority of these studies have investigated neural responses to adult emotional display, which may be confounded by elevated sensitivity to social rank and threat in AN. Therefore, the aim of this study was to investigate the neural processes underlying implicit processing of positively and negatively valenced infant emotional display in AN. Twenty-one adult women with AN and twenty-six healthy comparison (HC) women were presented with images of positively valenced, negatively valenced, and neutral infant faces during a fMRI scan. Significant differences between the groups in positive > neutral and negative > neutral contrasts were investigated in a priori regions of interest, including the bilateral amygdala, insula, and lateral prefrontal cortex (PFC). The findings revealed that the AN participants showed relatively increased recruitment while the HC participants showed relatively reduced recruitment of the bilateral amygdala and the right dorsolateral PFC in the positive > neutral contrast. In the negative > neutral contrast, the AN group showed relatively increased recruitment of the left posterior insula while the HC groups showed relatively reduced recruitment of this region. These findings suggest that people with AN may engage in implicit prefrontal down-regulation of elevated limbic reactivity to positively social–emotional stimuli.

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“…Many adult emotion coding systems rely on facial expressions (i.e., AFFEX; Izard and Malatesta, 1987), but infant emotion is also expressed through bodily movements (Weinberg and Tronick, 1994) and vocalizations, which are incorporated in the Lab-TAB coding system. Although numerous studies examine infant emotion using behavioral coding (e.g., Morris et al, 2011), no study focuses on validating the psychometric properties of the Lab-TAB in infants.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Infant Version of the Laboratory Temperament Assessment Battery (Lab-TAB): Measurement Properties and Implications for Concepts of Temperament

et al. 2017

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We describe large-sample research using the Infant Laboratory Temperament Assessment Battery (Lab-TAB; Goldsmith and Rothbart, 1996) in 1,076 infants at 6 and 12 months of age. The Lab-TAB was designed to assess temperament dimensions through a series of episodes that mimic everyday situations. Our goal is to provide guidelines for scoring Lab-TAB episodes to derive temperament composites. We also present a set of analyses examining mean differences and stability of temperament in early infancy, gender differences in infant temperament, as well as a validation of Lab-TAB episodes and composites with parent reported Infant Behavior Questionnaire (IBQ; Rothbart, 1981) scales. In general, laboratory observed temperament was only modestly related to parent reported temperament. However, temperament measures were significantly stable across time and several gender differences that align with previous research emerged. In sum, the Lab-TAB usefully assesses individual differences in infant emotionality.

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Beyond the Face: An Empirical Study of Infant Affective Configurations of Facial, Vocal, Gestural, and Regulatory Behaviors

Cited by 279 publications

References 5 publications

Emotional expression and heart rate in high-risk infants during the face-to-face/still-face

Emotional expression and heart rate in high-risk infants during the face-to-face/still-face

FMRI Study of Neural Responses to Implicit Infant Emotion in Anorexia Nervosa

The Infant Version of the Laboratory Temperament Assessment Battery (Lab-TAB): Measurement Properties and Implications for Concepts of Temperament

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