The discrimination of expressions in facial movements by infants: A study with point-light displays.

Autor: Xiao NG; Department of Psychology, Neuroscience & Behaviour, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario L8S 4L8, Canada. Electronic address: xiaon8@mcmaster.ca., Angeli V; Department of Developmental and Social Psychology, University of Padova, 35131 Padova, Italy., Fang W; Department of Psychology, Neuroscience & Behaviour, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario L8S 4L8, Canada., Manera V; Cognition Behaviour Technology (CoBTeK), EA 7276, Edmond and Lily Safra Center, University of Nice Sophia Antipolis, 06000 Nice, France., Liu S; Department of Psychology, Zhejiang Sci-Tech University, Hangzhou 310018, China., Castiello U; Department of General Psychology, University of Padova, 35131 Padova, Italy; Cognitive Neuroscience Center, University of Padova, 35131 Padova, Italy., Ge L; Center for Psychological Sciences, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310027, China., Lee K; Department of Applied Psychology and Human Development, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario M5R 2X2, Canada., Simion F; Department of Developmental and Social Psychology, University of Padova, 35131 Padova, Italy; Cognitive Neuroscience Center, University of Padova, 35131 Padova, Italy.
Jazyk: angličtina
Zdroj: Journal of experimental child psychology [J Exp Child Psychol] 2023 Aug; Vol. 232, pp. 105671. Date of Electronic Publication: 2023 Mar 30.
DOI: 10.1016/j.jecp.2023.105671
Abstrakt: Perceiving facial expressions is an essential ability for infants. Although previous studies indicated that infants could perceive emotion from expressive facial movements, the developmental change of this ability remains largely unknown. To exclusively examine infants' processing of facial movements, we used point-light displays (PLDs) to present emotionally expressive facial movements. Specifically, we used a habituation and visual paired comparison (VPC) paradigm to investigate whether 3-, 6-, and 9-month-olds could discriminate between happy and fear PLDs after being habituated with a happy PLD (happy-habituation condition) or a fear PLD (fear-habituation condition). The 3-month-olds discriminated between the happy and fear PLDs in both the happy- and fear-habituation conditions. The 6- and 9-month-olds showed discrimination only in the happy-habituation condition but not in the fear-habituation condition. These results indicated a developmental change in processing expressive facial movements. Younger infants tended to process low-level motion signals regardless of the depicted emotions, and older infants tended to process expressions, which emerged in familiar facial expressions (e.g., happy). Additional analyses of individual difference and eye movement patterns supported this conclusion. In Experiment 2, we concluded that the findings of Experiment 1 were not due to a spontaneous preference for fear PLDs. Using inverted PLDs, Experiment 3 further suggested that 3-month-olds have already perceived PLDs as face-like stimuli.
(Copyright © 2023 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)
Databáze: MEDLINE
Externí odkaz: