title: Affective matching of odors and facial expressions in infants: shifting patterns between 3 and 7 months.
abstract: Recognition of emotional facial expressions is a crucial skill for adaptive behavior. Past research suggests that at 5 to 7 months of age, infants look longer to an unfamiliar dynamic angry/happy face which emotionally matches a vocal expression. This suggests that they can match stimulations of distinct modalities on their emotional content. In the present study, olfaction-vision matching abilities were assessed across different age groups (3, 5 and 7 months) using dynamic expressive faces (happy vs. disgusted) and distinct hedonic odor contexts (pleasant, unpleasant and control) in a visual-preference paradigm. At all ages the infants were biased toward the disgust faces. This visual bias reversed into a bias for smiling faces in the context of the pleasant odor context in the 3-month-old infants. In infants aged 5 and 7 months, no effect of the odor context appeared in the present conditions. This study highlights the role of the olfactory context in the modulation of visual behavior toward expressive faces in infants. The influence of olfaction took the form of a contingency effect in 3-month-old infants, but later evolved to vanish or to take another form that could not be evidenced in the present study.
authors.affiliation: Developmental Ethology and Cognitive Psychology Group, Centre for Smell, Taste and Food Science (UMR 6265 CNRS - UMR 1324 INRA), Université de Bourgogne, Dijon, France.|Laboratoire Vision, Action, Cognition (EA 7326), Université Paris Descartes, France.
authors.forename: Ornella
authors.initials: O
authors.lastname: Godard
authors.affiliation: Developmental Ethology and Cognitive Psychology Group, Centre for Smell, Taste and Food Science (UMR 6265 CNRS - UMR 1324 INRA), Université de Bourgogne, Dijon, France.|Institut Universitaire de France, France.
authors.forename: Jean-Yves
authors.initials: JY
authors.lastname: Baudouin
authors.affiliation: Developmental Ethology and Cognitive Psychology Group, Centre for Smell, Taste and Food Science (UMR 6265 CNRS - UMR 1324 INRA), Université de Bourgogne, Dijon, France.
authors.forename: Benoist
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Schaal
authors.affiliation: Developmental Ethology and Cognitive Psychology Group, Centre for Smell, Taste and Food Science (UMR 6265 CNRS - UMR 1324 INRA), Université de Bourgogne, Dijon, France.
authors.forename: Karine
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Durand
mesh_terms: D004644:Emotions; D053483:Eye Movement Measurements; D005145:Face; D005149:Facial Expression; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D008297:Male; D009812:Odorants; D012903:Smell