Infant Emotional Expressions Research Articles

The Stability of Maternal Interpretation of Infant's Facial Expressions During Pre‐and Postnatal Period and Its Relation to Prenatal Attachment

The study explores maternal ability to perceive and interpret infant's emotional expressions during prenatal and postnatal period. One hundred forty‐nine women participated in this study. Women were recruited randomly for the study at their third trimester of pregnancy by midwives or health visitors from the district mother care centres. The IFEEL‐Picture, a projective test was used to assess maternal perception and interpretation of infant emotion during third trimester of pregnancy and early postnatal period. In addition, the expectant women completed a self‐administered questionnaire PAI #opPrenatal Attachment Inventory#cp measuring prenatal attachment towards their unborn baby. The results revealed that mothers interpreted infant emotions overwhelmingly in positive terms in both periods. Significant positive correlations between the two assessments suggest consistency in maternal interpretation of infant emotions. Moreover, results showed that the primipara mothers used the category joy more often in prenatal assessment than the multipara mothers. Whereas, the primipara mothers used the category fear was less often in postnatal assessment. The result thus is indicating for the importance of the current context of experience. However, mothers who were classified as medium attached used the category interest significantly more often in both assessment periods, whereas those who were classified as low used the category content more often in both period, suggests that women do have some representation of infant's emotions even before the birth of their own child.

Maternal responses to infant emotional expressions relate to infant attachment

This study examined how child temperament was related to parents' time spent accessible to and interacting with their 2-year-olds. Bivariate analyses indicated that both fathers and mothers spent more time with temperamentally challenging children than easier children on workdays, but fathers spent less time with challenging children than easier children on non-workdays. After accounting for work hours, some associations between temperament and fathers' workday involvement dropped to non-significance. For fathers, work hours also moderated the relation between irregular temperament and workday play. For mothers, work hours moderated the relation between both difficult and irregular temperament and workday interaction. Mothers also spent more time with girls (but not boys) who were temperamentally irregular. Results speak to the influence of child temperament on parenting behavior, and the differential construction of parenting roles as a function of child characteristics and patterns of work.

Hemispheric aymmetries in adults' perception of infant emotional expressions.

Hemispheric aymmetries in adults' perception of infant emotional expressions.

Hemispheric asymmetries in adults' perception of infant emotional expressions.

Accounts of emotion lateralization propose either overall right hemisphere (RH) advantage or differential RH versus left hemisphere (LH) involvement depending on the negative-positive valence of emotions. Perceptual studies generally show RH specialization. Yet viewer emotional responses may enhance valence effects. Because infant faces elicit heightened emotion in viewers, perceptual asymmetries with chimeric infant faces were assessed. First, it was determined that chimeras must be paired with their counterparts, not their mirror images, to tap viewers' sensitivity to adult facial asymmetries. Results showed an RH perceptual bias for infant cries but bihemispheric sensitivity to asymmetries in infant smiles. This effect was not due to LH featural versus RH holistic processing and held for additional, intensity-matched, spontaneous expressions. Specialized RH sensitivity to infant cries may reflect an evolutionary advantage for rapid response to infant distress.

Baby, it's in your smile: Right hemiface bias in infant emotional expressions.

Baby, it's in your smile: Right hemiface bias in infant emotional expressions.

Right-sided facial asymmetry in infant emotional expression

In normal adults, emotional expressions tend to be more intense on the left side of the face, while in preschool-age children, no significant bias in facial asymmetry has been found. We examined facial asymmetries during smiling and distress in 59 infants studied longitudinally at 6.5, 10 and 13.5 months of age. In these infants, asymmetric expressions showed a bias toward greater intensity on the right side of the face. The study of infant facial expression may provide clues to the maturation of the cortical control of emotional responses.

Baby, it's in your smile: Right hemiface bias in infant emotional expressions.

Baby, it's in your smile: Right hemiface bias in infant emotional expressions.

The meaning of infant emotional expressions

The meaning of infant emotional expressions

Sex differences in the recognition of infant facial expressions of emotion: The primary caretaker hypothesis

Although much research has been devoted to studying sex differences in functioning (e.g., Maccoby and Jacklin 1974), most efforts have been directed toward documenting or elucidating the proximate causes of sex differences. Few attempts have been made, however, to explain the ultimate causes of these differences or the selective pressures that have led to the development of psychological differences between males and females [for exceptions see Symons (1979) and Daly and Wilson (1983)]. Toward this end of blending psychology with evolutionary theory we develop what we call the “primary caretaker hypothesis,” which predicts that the sex that through evolutionary time has dominated infant caretaking will differentially exhibit skills that are important in caretaking (e.g., the ability to rapidly recognize infant emotional expressions). Evidence is advanced to show that females dominate childcare in nonhuman primates and humans and that a high level of care of infants is crucial, given universally high infant mortality rates throughout our evolutionary history and the number of potential hazards impairing infant development. The prompt and accurate recognition of infant emotional cues—especially in the face—is an important component of caretaking practices, and thus selective pressures should result in greater proficiency in this ability in the sex that caretakes most. An experimental procedure is described where informants were tested in their speed and accuracy of identifying infant facial expressions of emotion. A statistical analysis of the results revealed that females were significantly more accurate and rapid than males in their discrimination of facial expressions and that previous experience in childcare had no effect on this sex difference. Follow-up research concerning the “primary caretaker hypothesis” is proposed.

Facial Patterning and Infant Emotional Expression: Happiness, Surprise, and Fear

Facial Patterning and Infant Emotional Expression: Happiness, Surprise, and Fear

Facial Patterning and Infant Emotional Expression: Happiness, Surprise, and Fear

Although recent studies have convincingly demonstrated that emotional expressions can be judged reliably from actor-posed facial displays, there exists little evidence that facial expressions in lifelike settings are similar to actor-posed displays, are reliable across situations designed to elicit the same emotion, or provide sufficient information to mediate consistent emotion judgments by raters. The present study therefore investigated these issues as they related to the emotions of happiness, surprise, and fear. 27 infants between 10 and 12 months of age (when emotion masking is not likely to confound results) were tested in 2 situations designed to elicit hapiness (peek-a-boo game and a collapsing toy), 2 to elicit surprise (a toy-switch and a vanishing-object task), and 2 to elicit fear (the visual cliff and the approach of a stranger. Dependent variables included changes in 28 facial response components taken from previous work using actor poses, as well as judgments of the presence of 6 discrete emotions. In addition, instrumental behaviors were used to verify with other than facial expression responses whether the predicted emotion was elicited. In contrast to previous conclusions on the subject, we found that judges were able to make all facial expression judgments reliably, even in the absence of contextual information. Support was also obtained for at least some degree of specificity of facial component response patterns, especially for happiness and surprise. Emotion judgments by raters were found to be a function of the presence of discrete facial components predicted to be linked to those emotions. Finally, almost all situations elicited blends, rather than discrete emotions.