Office of the Provost, University of Montana, USA.
Emotion. 2011 Aug;11(4):842-51. doi: 10.1037/a0024435.
From birth, infants are exposed to a wealth of emotional information in their interactions. Much research has been done to investigate the development of emotion perception, and factors influencing that development. The current study investigates the role of familiarity on 3.5-month-old infants' generalization of emotional expressions. Infants were assigned to one of two habituation sequences: in one sequence, infants were visually habituated to parental expressions of happy or sad. At test, infants viewed either a continuation of the habituation sequence, their mother depicting a novel expression, an unfamiliar female depicting the habituated expression, or an unfamiliar female depicting a novel expression. In the second sequence, a new sample of infants was matched to the infants in the first sequence. These infants viewed the same habituation and test sequences, but the actors were unfamiliar to them. Only those infants who viewed their own mothers and fathers during the habituation sequence increased looking. They dishabituated looking to maternal novel expressions, the unfamiliar female's novel expression, and the unfamiliar female depicting the habituated expression, especially when sad parental expressions were followed by an expression change to happy or to a change in person. Infants are guided in their recognition of emotional expressions by the familiarity of their parents, before generalizing to others.
从出生起，婴儿在互动中就会接触到大量的情感信息。大量研究已经探讨了情绪感知的发展以及影响这种发展的因素。本研究调查了熟悉度对 3.5 个月大婴儿情绪表达泛化的影响。婴儿被分配到两种习惯化序列中的一种：在一种序列中，婴儿通过视觉习惯化来熟悉父母表现出的快乐或悲伤表情。在测试中，婴儿观看了习惯化序列的延续、他们的母亲描绘了一个新的表情、一个陌生的女性描绘了习惯化的表情、或者一个陌生的女性描绘了一个新的表情。在第二种序列中，一组新的婴儿与第一组婴儿相匹配。这些婴儿观看了相同的习惯化和测试序列，但演员对他们来说是陌生的。只有那些在习惯化序列中看到自己母亲和父亲的婴儿增加了注视。他们对母亲的新表情、陌生女性的新表情以及陌生女性描绘的习惯化表情失去了兴趣，尤其是当悲伤的父母表情之后是快乐表情或换了人时。婴儿在将情绪表达推广到其他人之前，会根据父母的熟悉程度来指导他们对情绪表达的识别。
