Facial Patterning and Infant Emotional Expression: Happiness, Surprise, and Fear

Abstract

Although recent studies have convincingly demonstrated that emotional expressions can be judged reliably from actor-posed facial displays, there exists little evidence that facial expressions in lifelike settings are similar to actor-posed displays, are reliable across situations designed to elicit the same emotion, or provide sufficient information to mediate consistent emotion judgments by raters. The present study therefore investigated these issues as they related to the emotions of happiness, surprise, and fear. 27 infants between 10 and 12 months of age (when emotion masking is not likely to confound results) were tested in 2 situations designed to elicit hapiness (peek-a-boo game and a collapsing toy), 2 to elicit surprise (a toy-switch and a vanishing-object task), and 2 to elicit fear (the visual cliff and the approach of a stranger. Dependent variables included changes in 28 facial response components taken from previous work using actor poses, as well as judgments of the presence of 6 discrete emotions. In addition, instrumental behaviors were used to verify with other than facial expression responses whether the predicted emotion was elicited. In contrast to previous conclusions on the subject, we found that judges were able to make all facial expression judgments reliably, even in the absence of contextual information. Support was also obtained for at least some degree of specificity of facial component response patterns, especially for happiness and surprise. Emotion judgments by raters were found to be a function of the presence of discrete facial components predicted to be linked to those emotions. Finally, almost all situations elicited blends, rather than discrete emotions.

Do Infants Show Distinct Negative Facial Expressions for Fear and Anger? Emotional Expression in 11‐Month‐Old European American, Chinese, and Japanese Infants

“…However, one plausible approach involves examining infants' expressive responses in situations believed to elicit different emotions. As described by Hiatt, Campos, and Emde (1979), demonstrating that infants' expressive responses meet both the criteria of intersituational specificity and intrasituational specificity would provide strong evidence for such differentiation. Intersituational specificity is demonstrated if infants show different facial expressions across two or more situations believed to elicit different emotions.…”

Emotional Behaviors, Emotivational Goals, Emotion Strategies: Multiple Levels of Organization Integrate Variable and Consistent Responses

“…For example, infants who appear afraid when facing a visual cliff and adults who report feeling surprised by unexpected events often do not show facial expressions of those emotions (Hiatt, Campos, & Emde, 1979;Reisenzein, Bördgen, Holtbernd, & Matz, 2006). But although people can feel an emotion without expressing it, or simulate an expression without feeling the emotion, evidence of significant emotion-expression consistencies remains striking.…”

The Meaning of Infant Emotional Expressions: Regularities in Caregiving Responses in Normal and Down's Syndrome Infants

“…Photographs of facial expressions of emotions are judged reliably by mothers and by other adults who are unfamiliar with the infants under study. Further, components of facial emotional patterns have been isolated , and related both to eliciting situations and to meaningful infant behavioral responses (Hiatt et al, 1979;Stenberg et al, in press). Thus, it now seem timely to study the social meaning of infant emotional expressions.…”