Cognitive Science Centre, University of Neuchâtel, CH-2000 Neuchâtel, Switzerland.
Cogn Emot. 2013;27(3):539-48. doi: 10.1080/02699931.2012.724012. Epub 2012 Sep 24.
A great deal of what we know about the world has not been learned via first-hand observation but thanks to others' testimony. A crucial issue is to know which kind of cues people use to evaluate information provided by others. In this context, recent studies in adults and children underline that informants' facial expressions could play an essential role. To test the importance of the other's emotions in vocabulary learning, we used two avatars expressing happiness, anger or neutral emotions when proposing different verbal labels for an unknown object. Experiment 1 revealed that adult participants were significantly more likely than chance to choose the label suggested by the avatar displaying a happy face over the label suggested by the avatar displaying an angry face. Experiment 2 extended these results by showing that both adults and children as young as 3 years old showed this effect. These data suggest that decision making concerning newly acquired information depends on informant's expressions of emotions, a finding that is consistent with the idea that behavioural intents have facial signatures that can be used to detect another's intention to cooperate.
我们所了解的很多关于世界的知识并非通过第一手观察获得，而是得益于他人的证言。一个关键问题是要知道人们使用哪种线索来评估他人提供的信息。在这种情况下，最近对成人和儿童的研究强调了信息提供者的面部表情可能起着至关重要的作用。为了测试他人情绪在词汇学习中的重要性，我们使用了两个头像，当为一个未知物体提出不同的口头标签时，它们分别表达快乐、愤怒或中性情绪。实验 1 表明，与随机选择相比，成年参与者更有可能选择显示快乐面孔的头像所建议的标签，而不是选择显示愤怒面孔的头像所建议的标签。实验 2 通过表明，即使是 3 岁的儿童也表现出这种效果，扩展了这些结果。这些数据表明，有关新获得信息的决策取决于信息提供者的情绪表达，这一发现与行为意图具有面部特征的观点一致，这些特征可以用来检测另一个人合作的意图。
