Do Infants See Emotional Expressions in Static Faces?

Abstract

To determine whether young infants discriminate photographs of different emotions on an affect-relevant basis or on the basis of isolated features unrelated to emotion, groups of 17-, 23-, and 29-week-olds were habituated to slides of 8 women posing either Toothy Angry, Nontoothy Angry, or Nontoothy Smiling facial expressions and were then shown 2 new women in the familiarized expression and in a novel Toothy Smiling expression. At all 3 ages, recovery to the novel Toothy Smiling faces occurred only after habituation to Nontoothy faces (whether smiling or angry), not after habituation to Toothy Angry faces, indicating that infants had been responsive to nonspecific features of the photographs (presence or absence of bared teeth) rather than to affectively relevant configurations of features. In a second experiment, 2 older age groups (35 and 41 weeks) also proved to be insensitive to affect-related aspects of still faces, though more so for angry than for happy expressions. It is suggested that the young infant's difficulty in extracting emotional information from static stimuli may be attributable to the absence of the critical invariants (dynamic, multimodally specified) that characterize naturalistic expressions of emotion.

The Role of Person Familiarity in Young Infants' Perception of Emotional Expressions

“…Although these results are informative with respect to infants' ability to distinguish among different expressions, they tell us little about infants' ability to extract any meaningful information from the expressions they appear to distinguish (see R. F. Caron, A. J. Caron, & Myers, 1982;Nelson, 1987;Oster, 1981;Walker-Andrews, 1988, 1997. Furthermore, findings from several studies suggest that infants' discrimination of facial expressions is based merely on simple featural differences rather than on the recognition of the affective information (R. F. Caron, A. J. Caron, & Myers, 1985;Oster, 1981; but see Kestenbaum & Nelson, 1990). For example, R. F. Caron et al (1985) found that 4-to 8-month-old infants discriminate "toothy" smiles from closed-mouth smiles and closed-mouth anger, but not from toothy anger.…”

“…Furthermore, findings from several studies suggest that infants' discrimination of facial expressions is based merely on simple featural differences rather than on the recognition of the affective information (R. F. Caron, A. J. Caron, & Myers, 1985;Oster, 1981; but see Kestenbaum & Nelson, 1990). For example, R. F. Caron et al (1985) found that 4-to 8-month-old infants discriminate "toothy" smiles from closed-mouth smiles and closed-mouth anger, but not from toothy anger.…”

“…First, in the majority of laboratory studies, the presentation of emotional expressions is restricted to either the visual or auditory domain, whereas in face-to-face interaction studies, infants are exposed to multimodal emotion presentation in face, voice, touch, and gesture. Several investigators have argued that crucial affective information is conveyed in the dynamic motion of an emotional expression, but lost in static photographs (R. F. Caron et al, 1985;Ekman, Friesen, & Ellsworth, 1972;Fogel, 1993). Indeed, when A. J.…”

“…First, several investigators have proposed that for young infants, dynamic, naturalistic, and multimodal displays may be the optimal stimuli (R. F. Caron et al, 1985;Fogel, 1993;Walker-Andrews, 1988, 1997. Infants' auditory, visual, and haptic systems are well coordinated at birth, so they can attend to intermodal correspondencesthat is, relations that remain constant across stimulus transformations-at an early age (Bower, 1974(Bower, , 1977Gibson, 1969;Bushnell, 1981;Walker-Andrews, 1997).…”

Increasing social presence of social actors in e-learning environments: Effects of dynamic and static emoticons on children

“…The dynamic display of facial expressions provides unique temporal information about the expressions that is not available in static displays [26]. Although dynamic characteristics of facial expression are mostly overlooked, a few studies examine its effect on the intensity of emotional expressions and suggest that dynamic characteristics of facial of emotion are necessary for full extraction of emotional information from faces [27][28][29]. In the light of that, the dynamics is important in facilitating the perception of facial expressions.…”