Geangu Elena, Ichikawa Hiroko, Lao Junpeng, Kanazawa So, Yamaguchi Masami K, Caldara Roberto, Turati Chiara
Department of Psychology, Lancaster University, Bailrigg, Lancaster LA1 4YF, UK.
Department of Psychology, Chuo University, Hachioji-city, Tokyo, 192-0393, Japan; Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo, 102-0083, Japan; Current affiliation: Faculty of Science and Technology, Tokyo University of Science, Yamazaki 2641, Noda, 278-8510, Chiba, Japan.
Curr Biol. 2016 Jul 25;26(14):R663-4. doi: 10.1016/j.cub.2016.05.072.
Emotional facial expressions are thought to have evolved because they play a crucial role in species' survival. From infancy, humans develop dedicated neural circuits [1] to exhibit and recognize a variety of facial expressions [2]. But there is increasing evidence that culture specifies when and how certain emotions can be expressed - social norms - and that the mature perceptual mechanisms used to transmit and decode the visual information from emotional signals differ between Western and Eastern adults [3-5]. Specifically, the mouth is more informative for transmitting emotional signals in Westerners and the eye region for Easterners [4], generating culture-specific fixation biases towards these features [5]. During development, it is recognized that cultural differences can be observed at the level of emotional reactivity and regulation [6], and to the culturally dominant modes of attention [7]. Nonetheless, to our knowledge no study has explored whether culture shapes the processing of facial emotional signals early in development. The data we report here show that, by 7 months, infants from both cultures visually discriminate facial expressions of emotion by relying on culturally distinct fixation strategies, resembling those used by the adults from the environment in which they develop [5].
情绪性面部表情被认为已经进化，因为它们在物种生存中起着至关重要的作用。从婴儿期开始，人类就发展出专门的神经回路[1]来展现和识别各种面部表情[2]。但越来越多的证据表明，文化规定了某些情绪何时以及如何表达——社会规范——而且用于传递和解读来自情绪信号的视觉信息的成熟感知机制在西方和东方成年人之间存在差异[3 - 5]。具体而言，嘴巴在传递西方人情绪信号时信息更丰富，而眼睛区域在传递东方人情绪信号时信息更丰富[4]，从而产生针对这些特征的特定文化注视偏向[5]。在发育过程中，人们认识到在情绪反应性和调节水平[6]以及文化主导的注意模式[7]方面可以观察到文化差异。然而，据我们所知，尚无研究探讨文化是否在发育早期就塑造了面部情绪信号的处理过程。我们在此报告的数据表明，到7个月大时，来自两种文化的婴儿通过依赖文化上不同的注视策略在视觉上区分情绪性面部表情，这类似于他们成长环境中成年人所使用的策略[5]。
