SECTION 2. RESEARCH PERSPECTIVES Emotions and Social Development: Infants’ Recognition of Emotions in Others

Infants generally begin to recognize emotional expressions after 6 months of age; some reports have even observed recognition in neonates. Emotional recognition is important for social referencing, in which infants “read” their parents’ expressions to understand events. Three methods for studying how infants come to recognize emotion are described in this article: peek-aboo, matching faces and voices, and multimodal presentation. Pediatrics 1998;102:1268–1271; emotional recognition, social referencing, infant, multimodal information, amodal information, peek-a-boo, facial expression, vocal expression, habituation. ABBREVIATION. TLT, total looking time. Imagine the following scenario: A 14-month-old infant plays on the floor with her mother when an unfamiliar person enters. The mother stands up, smiles, extends her hand, and walks over to the stranger. Observing this, the infant loses interest and goes back to her toys. The infant has shown a skill—social referencing— that illustrates her ability to use expressions and actions to understand events.1 Had the mother responded with fear or anger in her face, voice, or gestures, the child would have acted quite differently. Infants learn to read and understand expressions and to use that information to guide their actions. This skill seems to develop rapidly, starting with a sensitivity to emotions, leading later to an understanding of those emotions. The as-yet unresolved questions about this process are: What information do younger infants detect in expressions? Can they discriminate various expressions? When can they understand the meanings of those expressions? To date, most researchers agree that infants begin to recognize emotional expressions at approximately about 7 months of age.2,3 In some cases, even the 5-month-old shows limited understanding, and there are scattered reports of neonates’ responding differentially to expressions.4,5 But true recognition seems to appear after 6 months of age. Using emotional recognition for social referencing, as described in the scenario, begins at approximately 8 to 10 months.1 In learning to discriminate and understand expressions, infants rely on contextual cues. Broadly defined, these cues include familiar settings, familiar persons, and multimodal (ie, sight and sound and touch) and amodal (ie, rhythm, intensity, rate, shape) information. By looking closely at the developing child’s responsiveness to emotional expressions in a number of contexts, we can gain understanding of the separate and combined influences of these contexts. The experiments described in the following article have been completed recently, but data analysis and interpretation still are underway. FAMILIARITY OF SITUATION: PEEK-A-BOO The peek-a-boo game was used to examine young infants’ perception of other people’s expressions.6 Peek-a-boo provides a unique opportunity to examine infants’ responses to expressions for the following reasons: • Parents and infants are familiar with the game. • Infants are attentive and enjoy peek-a-boo. • Infants have specific expectations about how the game is played. • Exaggerated expressions can be presented in a familiar context. • Peek-a-boo allows presentation of dynamic expressions to infants. • Infant responses to changes in expressions can be measured.