Infants' responses to facial and vocal emotional signals in a social referencing paradigm.
The independent effects of facial and vocal emotional signals and of positive and negative signals on infant behavior were investigated in a novel toy social referencing paradigm. 90 12-month-old infants and their mothers were assigned to an expression condition (neutral, happy, or fear) nested within a modality condition (face-only or voice-only). Each infant participated in 3 trials: a baseline trial, an expression trial, and a final positive trial. We found that fearful vocal emotional signals, when presented without facial signals, were sufficient to elicit appropriate behavior regulation. Infants in the fear-voice condition looked at their mothers longer, showed less toy proximity, and tended to show more negative affect than infants in the neutral-voice condition. Happy vocal signals did not elicit differential responding. The infants' sex was a factor in the few effects that were found for infants' responses to facial emotional signals.
Mumme
D L
DL
Department of Psychology, Stanford University, CA 94305, USA.
Fernald
A
A
Herrera
C
C
D000339:Affect; D005149:Facial Expression; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D018730:Infant Behavior; D008297:Male; D002666:Psychology, Child; D012919:Social Behavior; D014796:Visual Perception; D014831:Voice