Infant Discrimination of Naturalistic Emotional Expressions: The Role of Face and Voice

Abstract

The ability of infants to discriminate dynamic, multimodal expressions of emotion was assessed in a series of 5 experiments. In Experiment 1, 48 infants of 4 and 5 months (total N = 96) were habituated to color/sound videotapes of 6 women speaking the same script sadly or happily. Following habituation, 2 new women were presented, each speaking once in the familiarized emotion and once in the novel emotion. Order of stimulus presentation (Sad----Happy, Happy----Sad) was counterbalanced. 5-month-olds were able to discriminate the expressions in both directions, whereas 4-month-olds could discriminate them only in the Sad----Happy direction. In Experiment 2, the ability of 5- and 7-month-olds to discriminate happy and angry expressions was examined using the Happy----Angry stimulus order alone. Only the 7-month-olds could differentiate these stimuli. In Experiment 3, it was shown that 7-month-olds could not distinguish these same Happy----Angry stimuli without vocal accompaniment. The purpose of the fourth experiment was to determine whether the voice played an equally important role in the Sad----Happy discrimination of Experiment 1. Surprisingly, a 5-month group tested without voice readily discriminated these stimuli. Finally, the fifth experiment sought to determine whether an Angry----Happy comparison might also be discriminable without voice. A 7-month group tested in this manner could not discriminate these expressions, while a group tested with voice could. The results indicate that infants can differentiate dynamic, multimodal expressions as early as 5 months, that they distinguish dynamically distinct expressions earlier than more similarly animated expressions, and that they seem to rely more on the voice than the face in making these discriminations.

Interparental relationship dynamics and cardiac vagal functioning in infancy

“…Infants’capacity to distinguish between various emotional states portrayed by adult actors (Caron, Caron & MacLean, 1988), combined with a tendency to allocate higher levels of attention to angry emotional tone of voice (Grossman, Stirano, & Friederici, 2006), suggests that negative affect in the interparental relationship would likely be detected by infants. Avoidance of conflict likely engenders chronic tension, and negative affect as conflicts remain unresolved (Ablow, 2005).…”

Intermodal Perception of Adult and Child Faces and Voices by Infants

“…When presented with dynamic or live faces, neonates and infants during the first month are able to discriminate the mother from a female stranger (e.g., Carpenter, Teece, Stechler, & Friedman, 1970;Field, Cohen, Garcia, & Greenberg, 1984;Sai & Bushnell, 1988). By 4-7 months, babies show discrimination among different facial expressions (Biringen, 1987;Caron, Caron, & MacLean, 1988;Kestenbaum & Nelson, 1990;Nelson & Horowitz, 1983), and perhaps even at birth (Field et al, 1983). Infants also demonstrate a preference for "attractive" faces (Langlois, Ritter, Roggman, & Vaughn, 1991;Samuels, Butterworth, Roberts, Graupner, & Hole, 1994).…”

The development of the uncanny valley in infants

“…This general developmental trend is illustrated by a variety of findings. For instance, 5-month-old infants do not discriminate audiovisual affect (i.e., sad from happy) but 7-month-olds do (Caron, Caron, & MacLean, 1988), 5-month-old infants do not exhibit matching of visual and audible affect but 7-month-old infants do (Walker-Andrews, 1986), and 4-month-old infants do not perceive audiovisual gender information but 8-month-olds do (Patterson & Werker, 2002). …”