Infants' learning from distinct negative emotions.

Abstract

Here we investigated infants' developing ability to use emotional expressions as signals that guide their learning about objects. To do so, we presented 16- to 21-month-old infants (N = 99) with actors who conveyed anger, fear, or pain, and tested infants' generalization of others' emotional expressions (Study 1) and infants' exploration of objects (Study 2). Our findings suggest that infants attend to the information conveyed by emotional expressions: When two expressions provide different information (e.g., one conveys threat, and the other does not), infants treated those emotions differently, even if they were both negative. Specifically, infants were more likely to generalize negative emotional expressions that conveyed threat compared to nonthreatening negative emotions (Study 1) and were more likely avoid interacting with potentially threatening items compared to items that were merely evaluated negatively (Study 2). But, when two emotional expressions provided the same information (e.g., that an item was threatening) infants responded similarly to those two emotions (Study 1). These findings are in line with evolutionary theories, which posit that emotions are critical information signals that can be used to learn about the world. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).