title: Multimodal processing of emotional information in 9-month-old infants I: emotional faces and voices.
abstract: Making sense of emotions manifesting in human voice is an important social skill which is influenced by emotions in other modalities, such as that of the corresponding face. Although processing emotional information from voices and faces simultaneously has been studied in adults, little is known about the neural mechanisms underlying the development of this ability in infancy. Here we investigated multimodal processing of fearful and happy face/voice pairs using event-related potential (ERP) measures in a group of 84 9-month-olds. Infants were presented with emotional vocalisations (fearful/happy) preceded by the same or a different facial expression (fearful/happy). The ERP data revealed that the processing of emotional information appearing in human voice was modulated by the emotional expression appearing on the corresponding face: Infants responded with larger auditory ERPs after fearful compared to happy facial primes. This finding suggests that infants dedicate more processing capacities to potentially threatening than to non-threatening stimuli.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Tilburg University, PO Box 90153, 5000 LE Tilburg, The Netherlands. Electronic address: r.a.otte@tilburguniversity.edu.
authors.forename: R A
authors.initials: RA
authors.lastname: Otte
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Tilburg University, PO Box 90153, 5000 LE Tilburg, The Netherlands; Department of Psychiatry, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 101 Manning Drive, Chapel Hill, NC 27514, USA; Department of Cognitive Neuroscience, Maastricht University, Oxfordlaan 55, 6229 EV Maastricht, The Netherlands. Electronic address: franc.donkers@maastrichtuniversity.nl.
authors.forename: F C L
authors.initials: FC
authors.lastname: Donkers
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Tilburg University, PO Box 90153, 5000 LE Tilburg, The Netherlands; Faculty of Medicine and Life Sciences, Hasselt University, Agoralaan, Building C, 3590 Diepenbeek, Belgium. Electronic address: m.braeken@tilburguniversity.edu.
authors.forename: M A K A
authors.initials: MA
authors.lastname: Braeken
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Tilburg University, PO Box 90153, 5000 LE Tilburg, The Netherlands; KU Leuven, Department of Psychology, Tiensestraat 102, PO Box 3726, B-3000 Leuven, Belgium; Department of Wellbeing, Health and Family, Flemish Government, PO Box 30, 1030 Brussels, Belgium. Electronic address: bea.vdnbergh@tilburguniversity.edu.
authors.forename: B R H
authors.initials: BR
authors.lastname: Van den Bergh
mesh_terms: D000339:Affect / Q000502:physiology; D001307:Auditory Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D002540:Cerebral Cortex / Q000502:physiology*; D004569:Electroencephalography; D004644:Emotions; D005071:Evoked Potentials; D005145:Face; D005149:Facial Expression; D000066499:Facial Recognition / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D008297:Male; D014831:Voice
keywords: Affective priming; Audiovisual processing; Emotion perception; Event-related potential (ERP); Infant; Multimodal processing