Research Group Early Social Development, Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Stephanstr. 1A, 04103 Leipzig, Germany.
Research Group Early Social Development, Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Stephanstr. 1A, 04103 Leipzig, Germany; Department of Psychology, University of Virginia, Gilmer Hall, 485 McCormick Rd., Charlottesville, VA, USA.
Cognition. 2016 May;150:163-9. doi: 10.1016/j.cognition.2016.02.010. Epub 2016 Feb 18.
Sensitive responding to others' emotions is essential during social interactions among humans. There is evidence for the existence of subcortically mediated emotion discrimination processes that occur independent of conscious perception in adults. However, only recently work has begun to examine the development of automatic emotion processing systems during infancy. In particular, it is unclear whether emotional expressions impact infants' autonomic nervous system regardless of conscious perception. We examined this question by measuring pupillary responses while subliminally and supraliminally presenting 7-month-old infants with happy and fearful faces. Our results show greater pupil dilation, indexing enhanced autonomic arousal, in response to happy compared to fearful faces regardless of conscious perception. Our findings suggest that, early in ontogeny, emotion discrimination occurs independent of conscious perception and is associated with differential autonomic responses. This provides evidence for the view that automatic emotion processing systems are an early-developing building block of human social functioning.
对他人情绪的敏感反应在人类的社交互动中至关重要。有证据表明，成年人存在皮层下介导的情绪辨别过程，这些过程独立于意识感知而发生。然而，直到最近，人们才开始研究婴儿期自动情绪处理系统的发展。特别是，目前还不清楚情绪表达是否会影响婴儿的自主神经系统，而不管其是否有意识感知。我们通过在 7 个月大的婴儿面前潜意识和超意识地呈现快乐和恐惧的面孔来测量瞳孔反应，从而研究了这个问题。我们的结果表明，无论是否有意识感知，与恐惧面孔相比，快乐面孔会引起更大的瞳孔扩张，表明自主唤醒增强。我们的发现表明，在个体发育的早期，情绪辨别独立于意识感知发生，并与不同的自主反应相关。这为自动情绪处理系统是人类社交功能的早期发展基石的观点提供了证据。
