Young infants' generalization of emotional expressions: Effects of familiarity.

Abstract

From birth, infants are exposed to a wealth of emotional information in their interactions. Much research has been done to investigate the development of emotion perception, and factors influencing that development. The current study investigates the role of familiarity on 3.5-month-old infants' generalization of emotional expressions. Infants were assigned to one of two habituation sequences: in one sequence, infants were visually habituated to parental expressions of happy or sad. At test, infants viewed either a continuation of the habituation sequence, their mother depicting a novel expression, an unfamiliar female depicting the habituated expression, or an unfamiliar female depicting a novel expression. In the second sequence, a new sample of infants was matched to the infants in the first sequence. These infants viewed the same habituation and test sequences, but the actors were unfamiliar to them. Only those infants who viewed their own mothers and fathers during the habituation sequence increased looking. They dishabituated looking to maternal novel expressions, the unfamiliar female's novel expression, and the unfamiliar female depicting the habituated expression, especially when sad parental expressions were followed by an expression change to happy or to a change in person. Infants are guided in their recognition of emotional expressions by the familiarity of their parents, before generalizing to others.

Recognizing facial expressions of emotion in infancy: A replication and extension

“…The first possibility is that methodological differences underlie the discrepant findings. For instance, in the current study we used unimodal presentation of emotional expressions (i.e., static photographs of faces), whereas Walker‐Andrews et al () used bimodal presentation of emotional expressions (i.e., paired facial and vocal expressions). Some researchers have argued that the use of bimodal stimuli provides infants with the best opportunity to display their capabilities (Walker‐Andrews, ).…”

“…The only previous study investigating how familiarity impacts emotion categorization found a facilitating effect of familiarity (Walker‐Andrews et al, ). Thus, we hypothesize that infants will show clearer evidence of fear categorization with familiar faces in the current study; specifically, they will show a novelty preference for happy faces following habituation to fearful faces.…”

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The Influence of Affirming Kindness and Community on Broadening Participation in STEM Career Pathways

“…The most well‐researched area of study regarding this centers on perceptions of smiles. There is strong evidence that humans are hard wired to notice, perceive, and respond to smiles, beginning even as young as 3 months old (Walker‐Andrews, ; Walker‐Andrews, Krogh‐Jespersen, Mayhew, & Coffield, ). In contrast, perceiving anger emerges around 6 months (Striano, Brennan, & Vanman, ).…”