O'Callaghan Olivia, Whitehouse Jamie, Paukner Annika, Witham Claire L, Waller Bridget M
Department of Psychology, Nottingham Trent University, Nottingham, UK.
Centre for Macaques, Medical Research Council, UK.
iScience. 2025 Mar 25;28(4):112179. doi: 10.1016/j.isci.2025.112179. eCollection 2025 Apr 18.
Facial expressions are common across mammals and are essential for social communication. In humans, a rich early social environment is important for the appropriate development of facial expression processing. Whether other animals are similarly reliant on social input for facial expression development, or have a more fixed system, is unknown. Here, we investigated how maternal care influences facial expression processing skills in rhesus macaques (). We conducted three experiments quantifying facial expression processing and examined performance in relation to historical maternal data and across age. Facial expression processing skill was predicted by positive social contact with the mother during infancy and increased with age until adulthood. Our findings provide the first evidence that early social input, specifically maternal care, enhances facial expression processing skills in non-human animals. This challenges the notion that facial expression processing systems are entirely hard-wired and innate and emphasizes the importance of flexibility and responsiveness to local conditions.
面部表情在哺乳动物中很常见，并且对于社交沟通至关重要。在人类中，丰富的早期社交环境对于面部表情处理的适当发展很重要。其他动物在面部表情发展方面是否同样依赖社交输入，或者是否有更固定的系统，尚不清楚。在这里，我们研究了母性关怀如何影响恒河猴的面部表情处理技能。我们进行了三项实验来量化面部表情处理，并检查了与历史母性数据相关的表现以及不同年龄段的表现。面部表情处理技能是由婴儿期与母亲的积极社交接触所预测的，并且随着年龄增长直至成年而提高。我们的研究结果提供了首个证据，表明早期社交输入，特别是母性关怀，能提高非人类动物的面部表情处理技能。这挑战了面部表情处理系统完全是硬连线和天生的这一观念，并强调了灵活性和对当地条件做出反应的重要性。
