Document Type

Article

Keywords

Emotion recognition, Intermodal emotion perception, Body emotion, Infant emotion perception, Body knowledge development

Abstract

Research suggests that infants progress from discrimination to recognition of emotions in faces during the first half year of life. It is whether the perception of emotions from bodies develops in a similar manner. In the current study, when presented with happy and angry body videos and voices, 5-month-olds looked longer at the matching video when they were presented upright but not when they were inverted. In contrast, 3.5-month-olds failed to match even with upright videos. Thus, 5-month-olds but not 3.5-month-olds exhibited evidence of recognition of emotions from bodies by demonstrating intermodal matching. In a subsequent experiment, younger infants did discriminate between body emotion videos but failed to exhibit an inversion effect, suggesting that discrimination may be based on low-level stimulus features. These results document a developmental change from discrimination based on non-emotional information at 3.5 months to recognition of body emotions at 5 months. This pattern of development is similar to face emotion knowledge development and suggests that both the face and body emotion perception systems develop rapidly during the first half year of life.

Publication Date

February 2018

Publication Title

Infant Behavior and Development

ISSN

0163-6383

Volume

50

First Page

42

Last Page

51

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.infbeh.2017.10.007

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Repository URL

https://irl.umsl.edu/psychology-faculty/96