Infants' responses to adult static facial expressions

Empathy during early Childhood Across Cultures, Development of

“…Young 2-monthold infants respond with matched facial expressions of happiness when their mothers display vocal and facial expressions of positive emotions (Haviland and Lelwica, 1987). Similar patterns of results have been recorded in 4-to 6-month-old and 7-to 9-month-old infants, who responded with positive behaviors to a happy female face and with negative behaviors to an angry face (Serrano et al, 1995). While these emotional expressions may represent just the use of adequate social interaction means, they may also indicate empathic-like responses.…”

Discrimination of facial expression by 5-month-old infants of nondepressed and clinically depressed mothers

“…Human beings are skilled at discriminating facial expressions. Indeed, research indicates that as early as 2 to 3 months of age infants (of nondepressed mothers) reliably discriminate a range of facial expressions, such as happiness, sadness, anger, fear, and surprise (e.g., Barrera & Maurer, 1981; Bornstein & Arterberry, 2003; Caron, Caron, & Myers, 1985; LaBarbera, Izard, Vietze, & Parisi, 1976; Ludemann, 1991; Serrano, Iglesias, & Loeches, 1995; Young-Browne, Rosenfield, & Horowitz, 1977). …”

Looking Across Domains to Understand Infant Representation of Emotion

“…For example, Sorce, Emde, Campos, and Klinnert (1985) reported that 12-month-olds’ responses to a visual cliff task varied as a function of the emotional expression depicted by the caregiver in a social referencing context, although sizeable proportions of infants in that study did not reference the caregiver, and even among those that did, some behaved contrary to expectation (see discussion in Nelson, 1987). Similarly, the Serrano et al (1995) study described earlier measured behavioral reactions such as approach and smiling when happy faces were depicted, and avoidance and frowning when angry faces were depicted. Although, overall, positive reactions tended to be more frequent during habituation to happy than to angry expressions, and negative reactions occurred more often to angry than to the other two expressions, the results were inconsistent.…”

“…In another study where “toothiness” was not an issue because all the female models posing expression had closed mouths, infants as young as four months of age were presented with the category contrasts of happiness versus anger, happiness versus neutral, or anger versus neutral in a habituation–dishabituation procedure (Serrano, Iglesias, & Loeches, 1995). Each infant in the study participated in two of the six possible conditions (i.e., happy → angry, angry → happy, happy → neutral, neutral → happy, angry → neutral, neutral → angry), one on each of two consecutive days of testing.…”