NEONATE AND INFANT EMOTION EXPRESSION PERCEIVED BY ADULTS

Abstract

This exploratory study investigates the meaning that adults attribute to the facial expressions of neonates and young infants using different types of scales, and tries to assess whether adult judgments get more precise as the infants get older. We videotaped longitudinally six infants' facial expressions in 5 everyday life situations at 3 days, 1 month, and 3 months old. Untrained adult decoders had to assess the activation and pleasure/displeasure levels signaled by the isolated videotaped facial expressions, recognize the stimulus situations, and attribute a verbal label to each expression. Our results showed that inter-decoder agreement was higher when the babies' facial expressions were considered as signals of activation or of pleasure/displeasure, and decreased significantly when the expressions had to be interpreted as signals of specific situations or when a verbal label had to be ascribed. The specificity and the accuracy of the answers, and inter-decoder agreement, were higher for the older infants.