Abstract
The paired-comparison novelty technique was used to assess the 5-month-old infant's ability to discriminate between the facial expressions of anger, fear, and sadness. The 72 infants met the criterion for discrimination except when anger was the novel stimulus. It was hypothesized that for some infants novelty was a less potent determinant of looking than was another aspect of the stimulus ex pression, such as its social-signal value or relative aversiveness. A second experiment was designed to test this notion. Sixty-eight infants failed to meet the criterion of discrimination between joy, anger, and interest, though infants had done so in previous studies. Results of the two experiments suggest that some 5-month-olds can discriminate between anger, sadness, and fear expressions, but that the paired-comparison novelty technique may underestimate the infant's ability to detect differences among stimuli of different social- or emotion-signal value.
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