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EMOTIONS AS BEHAVIOR REGULATORS: SOCIAL REFERENCING IN INFANCY
Abstract
This chapter deals with three broad issues: Whether emotions are epiphenomenal, how emotions play a crucial role in determining appraisal processes, and what the mechanisms are by which emotions may influence interpersonal behavior. We present evidence from studies indicating that emotions play a crucial role in the regulation of social behavior. Social regulation by emotion is particularly clear in a process we call social referencing—the active search by a person for emotional information from another person, and the subsequent use of that emotion to help appraise an uncertain situation. Social referencing has its roots in infancy, and we propose that it develops through a four-level sequence of capacities to process emotional information from facial expression. We discuss whether the social regulatory functions of emotion are innate or socially learned, whether feeling plays an important role in mediating the effects of emotional expressions of one person on the behavior of another, and whether stimulus context is important in accounting for differences in reaction to the same emotional information.
... Kaufmann & Kaufmann, 1980), visual and acoustic information that specifies the affordances of others (Spelke, 1976;Spelke & Cortelyou, 1981), and reciprocal patterns in mother-infant interactions (Stern, 1974;Trevarthen, 1979). By the end of the first year, they also show social referencing, a more complex skill in which others' expressions may be used as information about external events (Klinnert, Campos, Sorce, Emde, & Svejda, 1983). With respect to relevant experimental evidence, methods selected by researchers are varied because they have tried to discover what infants understand about emotional expressions by using combinations of "converging operations" (Garner, 1981;Walker, 1981). ...
... Biihler (1930) and Charlesworth and Kreutzer (1973) came to similar conclusions long before. Klinnert et al. (1983) posed developmental levels on which infants perceive facial expressions: no discrimination (0-6 weeks), discrimination devoid of understanding (6 weeks-5 months), emotional resonance in which infants directly experience another's emotion (5-9 months), and social referencing in which infants use the motions of others to guide their own actions (9+ months). ...
The literature on infants’ perception of facial and vocal expressions, combined with data from studies on infant-directed speech, mother–infant interaction, and social referencing, supports the view that infants come to recognize the affective expressions of others through a perceptual differentiation process. Recognition of affective expressions changes from a reliance on multimodally presented information to the recognition of vocal expressions and then of facial expressions alone. Face or voice properties become differentiated and discriminated from the whole, standing for the entire emotional expression. Initially, infants detect information that potentially carries the meaning of emotional expressions; only later do infants discriminate and then recognize those expressions. The author reviews data supporting this view and draws parallels between the perceptions of affective expressions and of speech.
... Consistent with findings documenting increased trust for the ingroup (e.g., Brewer, 1999), participants evaluated ingroup expressions of happiness and fear as more genuine. Whereas ingroup smiles may reflect increased willingness to cooperate and share resources with one's group (Krumhuber et al., 2007), higher trust in fear expressions of the ingroup could be related to their importance as threat signals and displays that facilitate observational learning (Keltner & Kring, 1998;Klinnert et al., 1983). No significant difference was observed for anger expressions. ...
... Assuming that people prefer to affiliate with ingroup members, they can be expected to be more open to affiliative signals from the ingroup. Furthermore, higher trust in fear expressions of the ingroup could be related to their importance as threat signals facilitating observational learning (Keltner & Kring, 1998;Klinnert et al., 1983;Mineka et al., 1984). Interestingly, in Study 2, sadness was perceived as more genuine in outgroup faces, suggesting that signs of weakness might be more appropriate for fans of rival football teams. ...
Prior research suggests that group membership impacts behavioral and self-reported responses to others’ facial expressions of emotion. In this paper, we examine how the mere labelling of a face as an ingroup or outgroup member affects facial mimicry (Study 1) and judgments of genuineness (Study 2). In addition, we test whether the effects of group membership on facial mimicry and perceived genuineness are moderated by the presence of tears (Study 1) and the motivation to cooperate (Study 2). Results from both studies revealed group-specific biases in facial mimicry and judgments of genuineness. However, introducing cooperative goals abolished differences in judgments of genuineness of facial expressions displayed by ingroup and outgroup members. Together, the findings provide insights into how intergroup biases in emotion perception operate and how they can be reduced by introducing cooperative goals.
... Social ties serve essential self-and social-regulatory functions at the levels of affect, cognition, behavior, and physiology [33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40][41][42][43][44][45][46][47], making them fundamental to well-being Lee et al. BMC Public Health (2024) 24:1250 [48][49][50]. ...
Background
Being socially excluded has detrimental effects, with prolonged exclusion linked to loneliness and social isolation. Social disconnection interventions that do not require direct support actions (e.g., “how can I help?”) offer promise in mitigating the affective and cognitive consequences of social exclusion. We examine how various social disconnection interventions involving friends and unknown peers might mitigate social exclusion by buffering (intervening before) and by promoting recovery (intervening after).
Methods
We present an integrative data analysis (IDA) of five studies (N = 664) that systematically exposed participants to exclusion (vs. inclusion) social dynamics. Using a well-validated paradigm, participants had a virtual interaction with two other people. Unbeknownst to participants, the other people’s behavior was programmed to either behave inclusively toward the participant or for one to behave exclusively. Critically, our social disconnection interventions experimentally manipulated whether a friend was present (vs. an unknown peer vs. being alone), the nature of interpersonal engagement (having a face-to-face conversation vs. a reminder of an upcoming interaction vs. mere presence), and the timing of the intervention in relation to the social dynamic (before vs. during vs. after). We then assessed participants’ in-the-moment affective and cognitive responses, which included mood, feelings of belonging, sense of control, and social comfort.
Results
Experiencing exclusion (vs. inclusion) led to negative affective and cognitive consequences. However, engaging in a face-to-face conversation with a friend before the exclusion lessened its impact (p < .001). Moreover, a face-to-face conversation with a friend after exclusion, and even a reminder of an upcoming interaction with a friend, sped-up recovery (ps < .001). There was less conclusive evidence that a face-to-face conversation with an unknown peer, or that the mere presence of a friend or unknown peer, conferred protective benefits.
Conclusions
The findings provide support for the effectiveness of social disconnection interventions that involve actual (i.e., face-to-face) or symbolic (i.e., reminders) interactions with friends. These interventions target momentary vulnerabilities that arise from social exclusion by addressing negative affect and cognitions before or after they emerge. As such, they offer a promising approach to primary prevention prior to the onset of loneliness and social isolation.
... Others interpret these social signals through affective reactions (which are more automatic) and/or inferential processes (more deliberate or effortful), with the consequence that "emotional expressions inform observers about the expresser's appraisal of the situation" (van Kleef 2017: 241;cf. 2016: 37-55). 2 One study exemplifying this demonstrated that infants would be more likely to cross a visual cliff if their mother is smiling as opposed to her looking fearful (Klinnert et al. 1983). These processes may make an observer feel the same emotion they observe or they might feel a different, appropriate emotion. ...
Satires that tackle religion have always courted controversy. When Jerry Springer: The Opera was originally aired on the BBC in 2005, the show received 63,000 complaints and Christian Voice attempted to prosecute Mark Thompson (the Director General of the BBC) for blasphemy for airing the show. In this article I draw on the work of Stanley Fish and Gerben van Kleef to argue that interpretive communities of emotional readers provide a valuable framework for interpreting humor scandals. This framework contributes to our appreciation of the interpersonal in the emotional experience of humor and demonstrates that interpretations of humor are often goal-oriented and ideologically motivated. Using the examples of Christian Voice and Mediawatch-UK, I demonstrate how these emotional communities are constructed as well as the rhetorical strategies these organizations adopted. To accuse Jerry Springer: The Opera of blasphemy, for example, Christian Voice presented themselves as defenders of traditional British values. Finally, my analysis of these examples demonstrates that the potential for community outrage increases especially when the community faces a crisis of identity.
... Second, similar emotion expressions may also be due to social referencing. In this case, the observed emotions of others are used as a cue to the appropriate responding in an ambiguous situation (see e.g., Klinnert et al., 1983). In this case as well the source of the expression is an external event. ...
As our society ages, questions concerning the relations between generations gain importance. The quality of human relations depends on the quality of emotion communication, which is a significant part of our daily interactions. Emotion expressions serve not only to communicate how the expresser feels, but also to communicate intentions (whether to approach or retreat) and personality traits (such as dominance, trustworthiness, or friendliness) that influence our decisions regarding whether and how to interact with a person. Emotion Communication by the Aging Face and Body delineates how aging affects emotion communication and person perception by bringing together research across multiple disciplines. Scholars and graduate students in the psychology of aging, affective science, and social gerontology will benefit from this over-view and theoretical framework.
... This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly. Svejda, 1983), This process could be extended to account for the longer-term investment of objects with emotion-inducing ...
We approach disgust as a food-related emotion and define it as revulsion at the prospect of oral incorporation of offensive objects. These objects have contamination properties; if they even briefly contact an otherwise acceptable food, they tend to render it inedible. Drawing on sources from many cultures, we explore the implications of this perspective on disgust. Some of the issues we consider are the nature of the objects of disgust and why they are virtually all of animal origin, the meaning of oral incorporation, the “belief” that people take on the properties of the foods they eat, and the nature of the contamination response and its relation to the laws of sympathetic magic (similarity and contagion). We consider the ontogeny of disgust, which we believe develops during the first 8 years of life. We explore the idea that feces, the universal disgust object, is also the first, and we examine the mechanisms for the acquisition of disgust. We recommend disgust as an easily studiable emotion, a model for cognitive-affective linkages, and a model for the acquisition of values and culture.
... This interest in turn supports the development of a mind-reading ability needed to infer the playful intention of others and to find unusual behaviours amusing instead of frightening or uninteresting (Semrud-Clikeman and Glass, 2010;Mireault et al., 2012). The evolution of humour appreciation is grounded in social referencing i.e., a tendency by children to gather information from other individuals as a means of regulating their own behaviour in ambiguous situations (Klinnert et al. (1983), see Fawcett and Liszkowski (2015) for a review). This is indeed crucial in orienting babies in how to react to the appreciation of an incongruity which, depending on the cognitive level and the social context, can be appraised as scary, as a simple mistake, or as amusing (Mireault et al., 2014). ...
... Anna Freud and Dorothy Burlingham, who observed children's responses to the bombing of London during the Second World War, noted that the objective danger a child was in appeared to be less predictive of a phobic reaction than the mother's level of anxiety [195]. Their observations antedated the substantial interest in the vicarious learning of children in the context of social referencing [196,197] and other related, particularly facially transmitted, ways of deriving emotional information about risk and danger [198][199][200]. ...
The development of mentalizing and non-mentalizing is discussed along with the importance of mentalizing as a psychotherapy process in the treatment of mental health problems. A defining feature of mental disorder is the experience of “wild imagination,” and we consider that mentalizing difficulties—that is, the tendency to get caught up in unhelpful ways of imagining what is going on both for ourselves and for other people—are the price we as a species pay for the immense benefits of the human imagination. Mental health problems arise when mentalizing is lost and we use mentalizing processes that are from earlier stages of development. The relationships between mentalizing, use of low mentalizing modes, epistemic trust and distrust, and social processes are summarized.
... Ebenso scheint die Zahl an Purkinje-Zellen erniedrigt (Courchesne 1997 (Field et al. 1982;Klinnert et al. 1983), sodass das Ausbleiben dieses natürlichen ...
Ein Teil der Kernsymptome der ASS sind Defizite in der sozial-emotionalen Reziprozität, in der nonverbalen Kommunikation bei sozialen Interaktionen und das Verstehen von Beziehungen (DSM-V). Defizite in multisensorischer Integration spielen dabei eine zentrale Rolle. MSI beschreibt das Zusammenführen von sensorischen Impulsen zum erleichterten Verständnis unserer Umgebung. Bisherige Studien zeigen eine mangelnde multisensorische Integration bei Autisten. Wir untersuchen dies in unserer EEG-Studie mit einfachen audiovisuellen Stimuli und wenden neben den üblichen statistischen Analysen (Reaktionszeit, Antwortgenauigkeit), zusätzlich Miller’s Race Model Inequality als Indikator für multisensorische Integration an. Darauf folgt eine Zeit-Frequenz-Analyse für den Thetabereich, da sich in der Literatur eine verstärkte Theta-Antwort im EEG während multisensorischer Integrationsprozesse zeigt. Unsere Hypothese ist, dass sich MSI-Defizite bei autistischen Kindern mit langsameren Reaktionszeiten, schlechterer Antwortgenauigkeit und einem verminderten Anstieg der bimodalen Theta-Frequenz zeigen. Insgesamt werden die Daten von 29 typisch entwickelten Kindern (15 weiblich, 14 männlich) und 21 autistischen Patienten (17 weiblich, 14 männlich) im Alter von 11- 14 Jahren erfasst. Die Probanden müssen in der Aufgabe auf einfache audiovisuelle Stimuli reagieren. Im Gegensatz zum Großteil der aktuellen Literatur zeigt bei uns auch die Autismusgruppe intakte MSI mit einer Beschleunigung der Reaktionszeit und Verbesserung der Antwortgenauigkeit. In der Zeit-Frequenz-Analyse wird ein factorial mass ANOVA-Verfahren genutzt, welches für jeden Durchlauf eine zweifaktorielle 3x2 mixed model ANOVA (Modalität x Gruppe) durchführt. Es zeigt sich kein signifikanter Interaktionseffekt, aber ein signifikanter Haupteffekt in den Modalitäten. Eine post-hoc Analyse zeigt daraufhin jedoch für keine längere Zeitspanne einen signifikanten Unterschied zwischen bimodalen und unimodalen Theta in den verschiedenen Modalitäten. Wir finden also MSI-Prozesse auch bei Autisten, welche sich nach unserer Zeit- Frequenz-Analyse jedoch nicht in der Thetafrequenz darstellen lassen. Wir diskutieren die möglichen Ursachen für diese MSI-Effekte und vermuten, dass vor allem Aufmerksamkeitsprozesse als ein Kompensationsmechanismus eine Rolle spielen.
... At this level, emotional communication elicits complementary and reciprocal emotions in others that allow individuals to react to certain social situations (Keltner & Haidt, 1999). At this level, emotions also function as incentives or deterrents for others' social behavior (Klinnert et al., 1983). ...
... Interestingly, a common tension amongst the authors centered on those aspects of emotion that are innate and those that develop, and the distinction between passion (i.e., emotion) and reason (i.e., cognition). Campos, Izard, and others (e.g., Barrett & Campos, 1987;Izard, 1978Izard, , 1979Klinnert et al., 1983). The human infant was not merely lost in a Jamesian "blooming, buzzing confusion" (James, 1890, pp. ...
The cognitive revolution of the 1970s and 1980s brought with it an emphasis on cognitive processes involved in emotion. While a similar wave of cognitive research spread to the field of developmental psychology, it did so in a relatively affectively neutral way. While infancy research systematically whittled down developmental processes into their most basic cognitive underpinnings, the role of cognition in emotional development remains largely underrepresented in the literature. This chapter is a clarion call to researchers to devote equal theoretical and empirical efforts to the role of cognition in emotional development. It highlights three areas of research ripe for closer examination by researchers of emotional development: appraisal, executive functioning, and inference-based learning. By linking existing research methodologies and findings in these cognitively dominated domains with open questions relating to emotional development, the chapter highlights how this research can help spur progress in the study of emotion.
... Children's understanding of new entities is often first mediated by their interlocutors' affective display, especially through facial expressions. Such instances of "social referencing" (Klinnert, 1983) constitute "affective frames" (Ochs & Schieffelin, 1989) that are fundamental to children's cognitive and linguistic development. Sensory experiences and situated activities also play a decisive role in children's language development as "meaning comes about through praxis-in the everyday interactions between the child and significant others" (Budwig, 2003, 108). ...
Through daily exposure to the surrounding input structured in conversations, children's language gradually develops into rich linguistic constructions that contain multiple cross‐modal elements subtly used together for rich communicative functions. Children demonstrate their skills to resort to multiple semiotic resources in their daily interactions and expertly use them according to their expressive needs and communicative intents. Usage‐based (Tomasello, 2003) and cognitive linguistics (Langacker, 1988) as well as construction grammar (Goldberg, 2006) have enriched our comprehension of the processes at work. Those approaches need to be combined to gesture studies (Kendon, 1988; McNeill, 1992) and multimodal approaches (Andren, 2010; Morgenstern, 2014) to fully capture the orchestration of the semiotic resources at play (Cienki, 2012; Müller, 2009). But child language development cannot be understood outside its interactional, dialogic context (Bakhtin, 1981) and without taking into account the role of expert languagers (Vygotsky, 1934) in routines or formats (Bruner, 1975). The first section thus extensively focuses on a productive combination of theoretical approaches and methods, which have been essential to understand child language development, but analyzing child language is also necessary in turn to ground socio‐cognitive and interactional approaches to language. The salient features of the variably multimodal child's development are presented in the second section. The third section illustrates longitudinal pathways into multimodal languaging thanks to detailed analyses of adult‐child interactive sequences.
This article is categorized under: Cognitive Biology > Cognitive Development
Computer Science and Robotics > Natural Language Processing
Linguistics > Language Acquisition
Linguistics > Cognitive Linguistics
... The construct of social referencing, wherein infants use others' emotions to disambiguate the significance of stimuli and modify their behavior accordingly (Walle et al., 2017), assesses how infants modify their actions based on the emotional communication of others. Traditional social referencing paradigms index infants' approach or avoidance of ambiguous stimuli based on adults' emotional expressions (Klinnert et al., 1983). When stimuli used in the task is rewarding to infants, these paradigms mirror standard behavioral executive function delay of gratification tasks such as snack delay or gift delay, but in place of verbal instruction is emotional communication which infants must use to regulate their behaviors. ...
Recent calls have urged to bridge the fields of emotional and cognitive development to advance theoretical and empirical pursuits. Yet, despite notable overlap between research on executive function and emotion regulation, a uniting theory that informs future avenues of research is lacking. Infants are known to lack emotion regulation skills, as they are developing the abilities to regulate their emotions and coordinated responses. However, the field of emotional development demonstrates that at an early age, infants are adept at regulating their behaviors in response to others emotional reactions. Moreover, although classic delay of gratification tasks are fairly ecological measures, rarely are rules expressed to infants without emotions. This paper draws from recent interest in hot executive function to link infancy research on executive function and emotion. Hot executive function lends itself as a useful construct in this endeavor because it unites the study emotion and executive function. We offer a perspective that refines hot executive function within prominent emotion theories while discussing infant executive function and emotion empirical pursuits. Our perspective presents reliable paradigms from the field of emotional development to serve as tools for studying the development of hot executive function.
... Emotional mimicry is often conflated with other dyadic emotional phenomena such as emotional contagion and empathy. It can also be confused with other phenomena such as social referencing (see e.g., Klinnert et al., 1983) and parallel emotion elicitation, which can also result in matching facial expressions between two individuals (cf. Hess and Fischer, 2013). ...
Nonverbal behavior plays an important role for the communication of states such as emotions as well as in first impressions. The present article discusses models of nonverbal communication and then summarizes findings with regard to the nonverbal communication of emotions, via the face, voice, posture, touch and gaze. A second section describes some newer research on dyadic synchronization and a final section discusses nonverbal cues in the context of first impressions. A point is made that nonverbal behavior is embedded in a social and cultural context, which forms both the behavior and its interpretation.
... This may limit infants' ability to use cues such as facial expression and eye gaze to learn about the external world and develop communication skills (Brooks & Meltzoff, 2005;Feinman, 1982;Hornik & Gunnar, 1988;Kaye & Fogel, 1980;Klinnert et al., 1983;Moore, 2008;Moore et al., 1999;Tomasello, 2000;Walden & Ogan, 1988;Yale et al., 2003). ...
The development of independent sitting changes everyday opportunities for learning and has cascading effects on cognitive and language development. Prior to independent sitting, infants experience the sitting position with physical support from caregivers. Why does supported sitting not provide the same input for learning that is experienced in independent sitting? This question is especially relevant for infants with gross motor delay, who require support in sitting for many months after typically developing infants sit independently. We observed infants with typical development ( n = 34, ages 4–7 months) and infants with gross motor delay ( n = 128, ages 7–16 months) in early stages of sitting development, and their caregivers, in a dyadic play observation. We predicted that infants who required caregiver support for sitting would spend more time facing away from the caregiver and less time contacting objects than infants who could sit independently. We also predicted that caregivers of supported sitters would spend less time contacting objects because their hands would be full supporting their infants. Our first two hypotheses were confirmed; however, caregivers spent surprisingly little time using both hands to provide support, and caregivers of supported sitters spent more time contacting objects than caregivers of independent sitters. Similar patterns were seen in the group of typically developing infants and the infants with motor delay. Our findings suggest that independent sitting and supported sitting provide qualitatively distinct experiences with different implications for social interaction and learning opportunities.
Highlights
During seated free play, supported sitters spent more time facing away from their caregivers and less time handling objects than independent sitters.
Caregivers who spent more time supporting infants with both hands spent less time handling objects; however, caregivers mostly supported infants with one or no hands.
A continuous measure of sitting skill did not uniquely contribute to these behaviors beyond the effect of binary sitting support (supported vs. independent sitter).
The pattern of results was similar for typically developing infants and infants with gross motor delay, despite differences in age.
... The initiator of the PAM makes a joke or an ironical remark which increases the aective relatedness between the partners. He or she gazes towards the interacting partner in order to check the impact of his or her statement, a process that we could conceptualize as "social referencing" (Campos & Stenberg, 1981;Klinnert et al., 1983). He or she then begins to smile, which we interpret as a kind of relationship oer. ...
... Identifying potential social partners contrasts with learning the names and functions of objects or the norms and conventions of a social group. Infants readily learn names, functions, and norms by observing the choices of adults with whom they have no preexisting relationship (41)(42)(43)(44)(45). The few studies that have directly compared learning from parents versus strangers have found that older children learn from knowledgeable or confident strangers as effectively as they learn from their parents (46,47). ...
Infants are born into networks of individuals who are socially connected. How do infants begin learning which individuals are their own potential social partners? Using digitally edited videos, we showed 12-mo-old infants’ social interactions between unknown individuals and their own parents. In studies 1 to 4, after their parent showed affiliation toward one puppet, infants expected that puppet to engage with them. In study 5, infants made the reverse inference; after a puppet engaged with them, the infants expected that puppet to respond to their parent. In each study, infants’ inferences were specific to social interactions that involved their own parent as opposed to another infant’s parent. Thus, infants combine observation of social interactions with knowledge of their preexisting relationship with their parent to discover which newly encountered individuals are potential social partners for themselves and their families.
... Happiness and sadness: These emotions appear to be linked to Depression and Mania behaviors [98]. Later, to make long-term parental care possible in mammals, they would acquire the ability to express themselves, since this indicates to the parent the state of the offspring, making social interaction possible [134]. ...
... Second, the display of one's emotion communicates valuable information to both oneself (Schwarz and Clore, 1983) and other people (Oatley and Johnson-Laird, 1987) by revealing one's inner emotional state (Ekman, 1993). Lastly, emotions can serve as incentives or obstacles for others' social behavior (Klinnert et al., 1983). ...
This research aimed to explore the effects of communication channels and anger intensity as factors determining how the expression of anger affects negotiation outcomes. Based on the “emotions as social information” (EASI) model and media richness theory, we tried to examine how anger expression influences both economic and psychological negotiation outcomes as a function of communication channels and explore its underlying mechanism. In Study 1, 470 participants were randomly assigned to one of the five experimental conditions-neutral, anger expression via text/emoticon/voice/video-and asked to participate in an online negotiation task. The results showed a significant main effect of communication channel; partner’s anger expression via communication channels richer in non-verbal cues (voice and video) led participants to make a higher concession and report lower satisfaction with negotiation and lower desire for future interaction with the same partner compared to anger expression via less rich channels (text and emoticon). The anger expression effects on psychological outcomes were partially explained by perceiver’s anger experience in response to anger display, which is consistent with the affective mechanism proposed by the EASI model. Study 2 examined whether the results of Study 1 could be attributable to the different levels of anger intensity perceived by the participants across different communication channels. Data analyses from 189 participants showed a significant main effect of anger intensity only with a desire for future interaction, but not with satisfaction and concession. The insignificant findings of the latter imply that the observed channel effect in Study 1 cannot be fully explained by the intensity effect.
... Similarly, others' facial expressions of joy when watching together a person juggling balls in the city square are automatically ascribed by the subject to the scene [3]. This important feature of social perception supplements the use young children gradually learn to make of others' embodied reactions to guide them in how to assess and respond to events around them, i.e., social referencing [33,34] and joint attention. Broadly put, a capacity for joint attention that develops toward an infant's first birthday enables them to effectively gain others' perspectives on a jointly attended locus by attuning to their embodied patterns [25]. ...
Phenomenological approaches suggest that the bodily presence of others has a profound influence on the experience of social spaces. This intimate relationship is particularly evident in mental disorders. Investigations into the nature of intersubjectivity in various pathologies indicate that modifications to the capacity for social perception play a key role in determining the manners in which the social space is experienced and felt. This paper aims to examine the interviewing relation of social perception and the experience of space and its consequences in autism spectrum disorder (ASD). This is done through a phenomenologically informed analysis of the functioning of social perception in ASD. Our account proposes that the atypical socio-perceptual patterns exhibited by people with autism significantly reduce the capacity to grasp the context of the situation, which facilitates and intensifies negative feelings that are intertwined with the experience of social spaces. This novel understanding draws on the idea that ASD involves a fundamental difficulty to establish a gestalt perception of social scenes. The evidence we discuss suggests that this anomaly in the operation of social perception also modulates the experience of the social space. Failing to perceive the wholeness of the situation means that people with autism often experience the social space as unfamiliar, confusing, uncertain, and unsafe, rather than feeling familiar and understood in the embodied presence of others. As a result, autistic subjects may experience difficulty evaluating the outcomes of hazardous circumstances, which poses a risk to their well-being, particularly in borderline situations. This suggestion is elaborated through the tragic occurrences that led to the killing of Eyad al-Hallaq, a 32-year-old Palestinian with autism.
... The process through which children learn intersubjective norms may therefore be akin to a social referencing process. Social referencing is a phenomenon frequently observed among children, in which their evaluations of things like toys are directly influenced by others' nonverbal responses to those same things (Hornik et al., 1987;Klinnert et al., 1983). For example, children in several studies avoided playing with a toy after seeing an adult respond negatively to either the toy or another person playing with that toy (Repacholi & Meltzoff, 2007). ...
One tacit assumption in social psychology is that people learn gender stereotypes from their environments. Yet, little research has examined how such learning might occur: What are the features of social environments that shape people's gender stereotypes? We propose that nonverbal patterns communicate intersubjective gender norms (i.e., what behaviors people value in women and girls vs. men and boys). Furthermore, we propose that children develop intersubjective gender norms in part because they are commonly and consistently exposed to these nonverbal patterns. Across three studies, we tested the hypotheses that (a) children are frequently exposed to a nonverbal pattern of gender-role bias in which people respond more positively to gender-stereotypical than counterstereotypical girls and boys and (b) emotionally perceptive girls extract meaning from this pattern about what behaviors others value in girls (traditionally feminine behavior) and boys (traditionally masculine behavior). Study 1 indicated that characters across 12 popular U.S. children's TV programs exhibited a small, but consistent nonverbal bias favoring gender-stereotypical TV characters. In Study 2, girls (N = 68; 6-10 years) felt more pressure to be feminine after viewing TV clips that included traditional nonverbal bias than after viewing clips that reversed this bias. As predicted, these results held only to the extent that children could accurately decode nonverbal emotion (i.e., were emotionally perceptive). Study 3 replicated these results (N = 91; 6-11 years). (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).
... In one variation, an infant is coaxed to cross the glass cliff by the mother, who is asked to present with either neutral, fearful, or encouraging affect. The infant is less likely to do so if the parent presents with a hesitant or fearful expression, and this hesitation is accompanied by changes in the infant's cardiac response to the cliff (Campos et al., 1992;Klinnert, Campos, Sorce, Emde, & Svejda, 1983). It is important to point out that this initial physiological response need not mean that the infant is also experiencing an emotional response. ...
The intergenerational transmission of psychopathology is one of the strongest known risk factors for childhood disorder and may be a malleable target for prevention and intervention. Anxious parents have distinct parenting profiles that impact socioemotional development, and these parenting effects may result in broad alterations to the biological and cognitive functioning of their children. Better understanding the functional mechanisms by which parental risk is passed on to children can provide (1) novel markers of risk for socioemotional difficulties, (2) specific targets for intervention, and (3) behavioral and biological indices of treatment response. We propose a developmental model in which dyadic social dynamics serve as a key conduit in parent-to-child transmission of anxiety. Dyadic social dynamics capture the moment-to-moment interactions between parent and child that occur on a daily basis. In shaping the developmental trajectory from familial risk to actual symptoms, dyadic processes act on mechanisms of risk that are evident prior to, and in the absence of, any eventual disorder onset. First, we discuss dyadic synchrony, or the moment-to-moment coordination between parent and child within different levels of analysis, including neural, autonomic, behavioral, and emotional processes. Second, we discuss how overt emotion modeling of distress is observed and internalized by children, and later reflected in their own behavior. Thus, unlike synchrony, this is a more sequential process that cuts across levels of analysis. We also discuss maladaptive cognitive and affective processing that is often evident with increases in child anxiety symptoms. Finally, we discuss additional moderators (e.g., parent sex, child fearful temperament) that may impact dyadic processes. Our model is proposed as a conceptual framework for testing hypotheses regarding dynamic processes that may ultimately guide novel treatment approaches aimed at intervening on dyadically-linked biobehavioral mechanisms before symptom onset.
... In humans, teaching plays a major role during skill acquisition 105,106 even though it is debated how common proactive teaching is in everyday skill acquisition outside the modern education setting [107][108][109] . However, apart from teaching, there are other, more passive processes at work in humans which resemble the pattern we found for the orangutans in our study: through social referencing, children actively seek out information from role models to appraise situations while there is no active involvement of the role model in the learning process as such 110,111 . Our results on the orangutan mothers' reactions during food solicitations suggest that a similar mechanism may be at work in orangutan feeding skill acquisition, but we cannot draw any inferences about the emotional state of the mothers 112 . ...
Immature orangutans acquire their feeding skills over several years, via social and independent learning. So far, it has remained uninvestigated to what extent orangutan mothers are actively involved in this learning process. From a fitness point of view, it may be adaptive for mothers to facilitate their offspring’s skill acquisition to make them reach nutritional independence faster. Food solicitations are potential means to social learning which, because of their interactive nature, allow to investigate the degree of active involvement of the mother. To investigate the role of food solicitation and the role of the mother in immatures’ foraging skill acquisition, we analysed 1390 food solicitation events between 21 immature Sumatran orangutans ( Pongo abelii ) and their mothers, collected over 13 years at the Suaq Balimbing orangutan population. We found that solicitation rates decreased with increasing age of the immatures and increased with increasing processing complexity of the food item. Mothers were more likely to share complex items and showed the highest likelihoods of sharing around the age at which immatures are learning most of their feeding skills. Our results indicate that immature Sumatran orangutans use food solicitation to acquire feeding skills. Furthermore, mothers flexibly adjust their behaviour in a way that likely facilitates their offspring’s skill acquisition. We conclude that orangutan mothers have a more active role in the skill acquisition of their offspring than previously thought.
... In addition to what has been said on the role of knowledge and belief representations in learning, links may be considered with respect to the robust and growing body of literature on learning from the emotions of others. Affective social learning (Clément & Dukes, 2017), of which "social appraisal" (Fischer, 2019;Manstead & Fischer, 2001 and "social referencing" (Klinnert, Campos, Sorce, Emde, & Svejda, 1983) are components, posits that others' emotional communication toward an object informs the observer and guides their perception and behavior (Fischer, 2019;Walle, Reschke, & Knothe, 2017). In such phenomenon, emotion is a key component which helps the learner appraise and reappraise their environment (Fischer, 2019;Walle et al., 2017). ...
We summarize research and theory to show that, from early in human ontogeny, much information about other minds can be gleaned from reading the eyes. This analysis suggests that eyes serve as uniquely human windows into other minds, which critically extends the target article by drawing attention to what might be considered the neurodevelopmental origins of knowledge attribution in humans.
... In addition to what has been said on the role of knowledge and belief representations in learning, links may be considered with respect to the robust and growing body of literature on learning from the emotions of others. Affective social learning (Clément & Dukes, 2017), of which "social appraisal" (Fischer, 2019;Manstead & Fischer, 2001 and "social referencing" (Klinnert, Campos, Sorce, Emde, & Svejda, 1983) are components, posits that others' emotional communication toward an object informs the observer and guides their perception and behavior (Fischer, 2019;Walle, Reschke, & Knothe, 2017). In such phenomenon, emotion is a key component which helps the learner appraise and reappraise their environment (Fischer, 2019;Walle et al., 2017). ...
I accept the main thesis of the article according to which representation of knowledge is more basic than representation of belief. But I question the authors’ contention that humans' unique capacity to represent belief does not underwrite the capacity for the accumulation of cultural knowledge.
... In addition to what has been said on the role of knowledge and belief representations in learning, links may be considered with respect to the robust and growing body of literature on learning from the emotions of others. Affective social learning (Clément & Dukes, 2017), of which "social appraisal" (Fischer, 2019;Manstead & Fischer, 2001, 2017 and "social referencing" (Klinnert, Campos, Sorce, Emde, & Svejda, 1983) are components, posits that others' emotional communication toward an object informs the observer and guides their perception and behavior (Fischer, 2019;Walle, Reschke, & Knothe, 2017). In such phenomenon, emotion is a key component which helps the learner appraise and reappraise their environment (Fischer, 2019;Walle et al., 2017). ...
Phillips et al. discuss whether knowledge or beliefs are more basic representations of others' minds, focusing on the primary function of knowledge representation: learning from others. We discuss links between emotion and “knowledge versus belief,” and particularly the role of emotions in learning from others in mechanisms such as “social epistemic emotions” and “affective social learning.”
... Other terms used to describe learning from a person's behavioural or emotional response include observational learning, social referencing, emotional signalling, social learning or vicarious learning. These terms may be considered akin to positive modelling when the observationally learnt material is positive (rather than fear evoking) (Campos et al., 1981;Feinman & Lewis, 1981;Field, 2006;Gunnar & Stone, 1984;Klinnert et al., 1983;Mumme et al., 1996;Sorce et al., 1985). Another term for positive modelling that has been used is "counterconditioning". ...
Fear of specific stimuli is thought to develop through associative learning mechanisms and research indicates that a form of observational (vicarious) learning known as positive modelling can counter these effects. This systematic review examined and synthesised the experimental positive modelling literature to establish its efficacy for reducing fear. Psych Info, Medline and the Psychology and Behavioural Science Collection databases were systematically searched until August 2021. Of the 1,677 papers identified, 18 experiments across 14 articles met the inclusion criteria. In the majority of these, positive modelling was found to lower fear levels in one or more of three procedures: fear prevention, fear reduction and fear reversal. Procedures inform prevention and treatment initiatives for specific phobias in several ways. The overall efficacy of positive modelling techniques and the ease in which they can be implemented highlight the importance of further research to evaluate their inclusion in prevention and treatment interventions. More research is required to establish the longevity and transferability of positive modelling.
... Smiles that are readouts of happy feelings reinforce the behaviors that elicited them in the first place. Thus, the communication of positive emotion through the smile is essential, among other things, for learning in infants, when mothers smile at babies to encourage desired behaviors (Klinnert et al. 1983). We will refer to smiles that express happiness as enjoyment smiles. ...
Recent application of theories of embodied or grounded cognition to the recognition and interpretation of facial expression of emotion has led to an explosion of research in psychology and the neurosciences. However, despite the accelerating number of reported findings, it remains unclear how the many component processes of emotion and their neural mechanisms actually support embodied simulation. Equally unclear is what triggers the use of embodied simulation versus perceptual or conceptual strategies in determining meaning. The present article integrates behavioral research from social psychology with recent research in neurosciences in order to provide coherence to the extant and future research on this topic. The roles of several of the brain's reward systems, and the amygdala, somatosensory cortices, and motor centers are examined. These are then linked to behavioral and brain research on facial mimicry and eye gaze. Articulation of the mediators and moderators of facial mimicry and gaze are particularly useful in guiding interpretation of relevant findings from neurosciences. Finally, a model of the processing of the smile, the most complex of the facial expressions, is presented as a means to illustrate how to advance the application of theories of embodied cognition in the study of facial expression of emotion.
... Smiles that are readouts of happy feelings reinforce the behaviors that elicited them in the first place. Thus, the communication of positive emotion through the smile is essential, among other things, for learning in infants, when mothers smile at babies to encourage desired behaviors (Klinnert et al. 1983). We will refer to smiles that express happiness as enjoyment smiles. ...
The set of 30 stimulating commentaries on our target article helps to define the areas of our initial position that should be reiterated or else made clearer and, more importantly, the ways in which moderators of and extensions to the SIMS can be imagined. In our response, we divide the areas of discussion into (1) a clarification of our meaning of “functional,” (2) a consideration of our proposed categories of smiles, (3) a reminder about the role of top-down processes in the interpretation of smile meaning in SIMS, (4) an evaluation of the role of eye contact in the interpretation of facial expression of emotion, and (5) an assessment of the possible moderators of the core SIMS model. We end with an appreciation of the proposed extensions to the model, and note that the future of research on the problem of the smile appears to us to be assured.
... This is because group members make sense of their leaders' behaviors, including their use of interpersonal emotion regulation, through their inferences about the motives that drive those behaviors (Ajzen & Fishbein, 1977;Ferris et al., 1995;Van Kleef et al., 2012;van Knippenberg & van Kleef, 2016). From early research on social referencing (e.g., Klinnert et al., 1983) and attributions (e.g., Heider, 1958), to later research on emotion behavior (e.g., Van Kleef, 2009), it has become accepted knowledge that targets of social behaviors are motivated to draw inferences about why others enact those behaviors. Such perspectives concur that people are motivated to make such inferences because this allows them to exert a degree of control; understanding why somebody acted a certain way can help one to respond appropriately and to predict their future behaviors (Regan & Fazio, 1977). ...
Recent research has shown that leader interpersonal emotion regulation is a relevant process for fostering desirable work outcomes. Expanding knowledge on this stream of research, here we argue that to have a complete view of the influence of leader interpersonal emotion regulation, the motives underlying the regulation behavior, namely, egocentric or prosocial, should also be taken into account. We draw on the informational function of interpersonal emotion regulation motives and use a multisource survey study with 99 group leaders and their 1482 group members to examine the effects of leader interpersonal emotion regulation motives. We found evidence that leader egocentric interpersonal emotion regulation motives were negatively related to group members’ perceptions of the relationship quality with their leaders, expressed in the group’s mean leader‐member exchange (LMX), and, thereby, related to lower leader appraisals of their own effectiveness. However, these negative effects were mitigated when leaders were at the same time prosocially motivated to regulate the emotions of the members of their groups. Therefore, this study contributes to expanding theory on interpersonal emotion regulation and its application to leadership, which is informative for theory and interventions about leaders’ affective influence in organizations.
... Die Patient_in blickt der Therapeut_in ins Gesicht, um die Wirkung ihrer/seiner Bemerkung auf die Thera-peut_in einzuschätzen, indem sie/er den beobachteten Gesichtsausdruck als Information verwendet (vgl. das Konzept des social referencing, Campos und Stenberg 1981;Klinnert et al. 1983). Dann beginnt die Patient_in im Sinne eines weiteren Beziehungsangebots zu lächeln und allenfalls hörbar zu lachen. ...
Zusammenfassung
Das Projekt verfolgt das Ziel, das affektive Regulierungsgeschehen in psychotherapeutischen Interaktionen anhand von Videoaufnahmen mikroanalytisch zu beschreiben und mit einem produktiven therapeutischen Prozess in Beziehung zu setzen. Analysiert werden mimische Verhaltensweisen, die mit dem Facial Action Coding System (FACS) objektiv erfasst werden. Im Fokus des Beitrags stehen die sogenannten Prototypischen Affektiven Mikrosequenzen (PAMS). PAMs sind durch Lächeln und Lachen gekennzeichnet und dienen dazu, Störungen in der Affektregulierung mit Hilfe des Gegenübers auszuregulieren. Sie spielen in der therapeutischen Beziehung eine bedeutsame Rolle bei der Aufrechterhaltung einer Balance zwischen Beziehungssicherheit und Konfliktspannung. Unsere Analysen sollen dabei helfen, die Funktionen dieser weitgehend unbewussten Prozesse besser zu verstehen und für den therapeutischen Alltag nutzbar zu machen.
Showing pride at work clearly communicates personal success (i.e., high competence) and boosts status; yet some evidence suggests it can also signal self‐focus and insensitivity to others (i.e., low warmth). Prior scholars have proposed gender differences explain mixed findings, but with limited support. We propose that the benefit‐cost tradeoff depends on the displayer's gender in conjunction with the social context of the display. We test the contextualized dual‐signaling model of employee pride displays, uniquely assessing how the signaler's gender and receiver's social motives (between‐person comparisons) change first‐impressions of competence and warmth after one or repeated exposures (i.e., within‐person comparisons). Study 1 was a 2 (signaler gender) by 2 (signal context) design obtaining judgments before and after seeing a dynamic pride display. Pride displays increased competence similarly across employee gender, but women saw significantly greater costs to warmth when displays were public (i.e., coworkers present), a violation of gender norms. In Study 2, we replicate this finding regardless of whether coworkers were collaborators or competitors (between‐person), and found repeated displays increase the warmth cost for women and the competence gains for men. In Study 3, we compare the costs for women of confirming gender norms for warmth (i.e., happiness display) or violating gender norms for warmth but conforming to leader norms for competence (i.e., pride display). Results suggest “happy” women are preferred as leaders over “proud” women despite higher competence. We clarify mixed findings and confirm the need for contextualized theory to understand gender differences in pride displays and career trajectories.
We examine how various social disconnection interventions involving friends and unknown peers might mitigate social exclusion by either buffering (intervening before) and by promoting recovery (intervening after).
Although leader anger expression targeted at employees' unethical behavior is pervasive in the workplace, we still know little about its theoretical meaning and consequences. To address this theoretical blind spot, we drew on fairness heuristic theory to investigate whether, how, and when unethical‐behavior‐targeted (UB‐targeted) leader anger expression affects team outcomes. Our findings from two time‐lagged field studies suggest that a punishment‐based distributive justice climate mediates the positive effects of UB‐targeted leader anger expression on team organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) and team viability. Moreover, leader moral decoupling weakens these indirect relationships. Specifically, the indirect relationships are weaker when the leader separated judgments of performance from those of ethics. These findings highlight the importance of a fairness perspective in understanding the consequences of leader anger expression targeted at unethical behaviors.
The development of self and the building of self-representations take place in a continuous process between infant, child, and primary caregivers. These processes are based on interpersonal communications with all their asymmetrical needs, desires, and satisfactions. Infant- and children’s research show the importance of the quality of the early emotional relationship between infant and primary caregivers. Parents’ sensitive receptiveness to their infant and child’s expressions will shape his unique personality.What constitutes the parents’ intra-psychic reality will unfold in fantasized and emotional interactions with the baby, then the child, by intersubjective exchanges and interpersonal relationships. Early parent-child relationship disorders are presented.Adoption and reproductive medicine are today available options for couples with involuntary childlessness as a possibility to realize their desire for a child. In both situations, the future parents need to grieve their imaginary child, who could not be conceived without the intervention of a third party (adoption agency or reproductive medicine). The specificity of parenthood by surrogacy or by sexual and gender minorities and the adoption-specific adjustment difficulties of foster or older children are described.KeywordsSelf-developmentParent-child-relationshipParenthoodAdoptionReproductive medicine
Understanding emotions is key to Affective Computing. Emotion recognition focuses on the communicative component of emotions encoded in social signals. This view alone is insufficient for a deeper understanding and computational representation of the internal, subjectively experienced component of emotions. This paper presents a cognition-based method called
Deep
as a starting point for deeper computational modeling of the internal component of emotions.
Deep
incorporates an approach to query individual internal emotional experiences and to represent such information computationally. It combines social signals, verbalized introspection information, context information, and theory-driven knowledge. We apply the
Deep
method to the emotion of shame as an example and compare it to a typical emotion recognition model, highlighting the differences and advantages.
In recent years, the body and the related notion of embodiment have become pervasive objects of inquiry in numerous disciplines, ranging from cognitive science to philosophy, linguistics, semiotics, cultural anthropology, and so on. This article aims to investigate more closely the characteristics of the notion of ‘body’ presupposed by these different theories, which often naturalize the body by taking it as a non-gendered, pre-discursive phenomenon, and thus hiding the concrete reality of the many different bodies we all as persons possess, with all their specific social, cultural, and discursive determinations. The body is not an isolated entity, but the result of a complex set of interactions with the environment and with others, where intersubjectivity plays a crucial role. Much research over the last few years has focused on the ways in which the body has inscribed in itself a predisposition to intersubjectivity: this article discusses another, complementary, question: the way in which intersubjectivity itself shapes bodies . Here the body is seen as the result of a process that takes place in a sociocultural environment and in intimate interaction with others, rather than the starting point for a process that, beginning from the single organism, expands and opens up towards a wider relational world. In this approach, intersubjectivity becomes a semiotic dimension of the social co-construction and sharing of meaning. All forms of intersubjectivity imply, and at the same time produce, a work of continual interpretation and reinterpretation which lies at the very basis of the peircean concept of semiosis. Finally, to exemplify how intersubjectivity, semiosis, and embodiment intimately intertwine with one another, one particular field of investigation is considered: the very the first stages of human development, where it is shown how the body becomes a semiotic entity: something much more than - and very different from - a purely natural organism.
At present there is little doubt that research regarding the development of children’s understanding of the mind has motivated some of the most exciting research in the field of child development. However, there is very little empirical work on the relationship between theory of mind (TOM) abilities and schooling despite many classroom activities encapsulating an understanding of the mind. As a result this paper has two aims. First and foremost consideration will be given to the development and content of children’s TOM understanding. This paper will explain that children’s TOM understanding arises from a relationship between specific cognitive mechanisms and environmental stimuli and is generally in place by the age of four-years. Following this, attention will be directed towards the methods of assessing whether an individual can be considered as having a TOM. Considerable focus will be given to the false belief task since this is one of the classic methods used within this body of literature. The second aim is to consider the relationship between an understanding of the mind and factors impacting on school performance. This relationship has been investigated most notably with respect to children’s peer relationships and an overview of this work will be given. Finally, recommendations for future directions in research will be made.
The inequitable distribution of domestic and caring labour in different‐sex couples has been a longstanding feminist concern. Some have hoped that having both partners at home during the COVID‐19 pandemic would usher in a new era of equitable work and caring distributions. Contrary to these hopes, old patterns seem to have persisted. Moreover, studies suggest this inequitable distribution often goes unnoticed by the male partner. This raises two questions. Why do women continue to shoulder a disproportionate amount of housework and childcare despite economic and cultural gains? And why is there a widespread one‐sided misrepresentation within different‐sex couples about how domestic and caring work is distributed between the two partners? We answer these questions by appealing to affordance perception – the perception of possibilities for action in one's environment. We propose an important gender disparity in the perception of affordances for domestic tasks such as the dishwasher affording emptying, the floor affording sweeping and a mess affording tidying. We argue that this contributes not only to the inequitable distribution of domestic labour but to the frequent invisibility of that labour. We explore the consequences of this hypothesis for resistance and social change.
Le processus d’accompagnement des entrepreneurs africains de conviction ou d’opportunités nécessite désormais une approche plus approfondie des processus d’intention et de déclenchement entrepreneuriaux, qui semblent s’inscrire dans des rationalités contingentes et spécifiques. Certains travaux culturalistes apportent des pistes de recherche intéressantes, mais ne déterminent pas précisément et de manière systémique ce qui influence les entrepreneurs africains dans leur modélisation des opportunités d’affaires. L’analyse des déterminants de l’agir entrepreneurial repose essentiellement sur des modèles exclusifs ou composites du comportement planifié et d’événement entrepreneurial. Ce travail de recherche se donne pour projet d’élargir ces modèles à l’approche neuronale de l’entrepreneuriat pour proposer un modèle plus ambitieux fondé sur les apports des neurosciences à une meilleure compréhension des processus de mentalisation des opportunités, des préférences et des normes sociales dans le processus de l’agir entrepreneurial en Afrique, en dépassant les modèles classiques et les seules approches culturalistes.
Berührung ist ein essenzielles Erleben von Nähe und Lebendigkeit. Die Fernsinne Sehen, Riechen, Hören eröffnen Informationskanäle, die im Affektaustausch Trajektorien oder »Felder« erzeugen. Trajektorie ist neben Raum und Zeit ein drittes Grundkonzept, das sich vermutlich genetisch am frühesten ausbildet. Trajektorie ist Spur eines Ablaufes, einer Verbindung, Verknüpfung, im weitesten Sinne ein Informationskanal mit oder ohne Wechselwirkung. Trajektorie ist ein implizites Grundprinzip psychodynamischen Denkens sowie auch von kybernetischen Funktionen. Abstraktes Denken in mathematischen und Computer-Sprachen kann durch Trajektorien visualisiert werden. Der Schilderung verschiedener klinischer Beispiele folgt ein Exkurs in die Struktur von Graph-Theorien und sozialen, neuronalen und artifiziellen Netzwerken. Auch diese Denkstrukturen enthalten spezifische, jedoch vereinfachte, zumeist gerichtete Trajektorien.
Methodological problems often arise when a special case is confused with the general principle. So you will find affordances only for ‚artifacts’ if you restrict the analysis to ‚artifacts’. The general principle, however, is an ‚invitation character’, which triggers an action. Consequently, an action-theoretical approach known as ‚pragmatic turn’ in cognitive science is recommended. According to this approach, the human being is not a passive-receptive being but actively produces those action effects that open up the world to us (through ‚active inferences’). This ‚ideomotor approach’ focuses on the so-called ‚epistemic actions’, which guide our perception as conscious and unconscious cognitions. Due to ‚embodied cognition’ the own body is assigned an indispensable role. The action theoretical approach of ‚enactive cognition’ enables that every form can be consistently processualized. Thus, each ‚Gestalt’ is understood as the process result of interlocking cognitions of ‚forward modelling’ (which produces anticipations and enables prognoses) and ‚inverse modelling’ (which makes hypotheses about genesis and causality). As can be shown, these cognitions are fed by previous experiences of real interaction, which later changes into a mental trial treatment, which is highly automated and can therefore take place unconsciously. It is now central that every object may have such affordances that call for instrumental or epistemic action. In the simplest case, it is the body and the facial expressions of our counterpart that can be understood as a question and provoke an answer/reaction. Thus, emotion is not only to be understood as expression/output according to the scheme ‚input-processing-output’, but acts itself as a provocative act/input. Consequently, artifacts are neither necessary nor sufficient conditions for affordances. Rather, they exist in all areas of cognition—from Enactive Cognition to Social Cognition.
A four-month-old boy gives a beaming smile and begins cooing as his mother approaches. His eyes sparkle, and as he looks into her eyes, he becomes excited. Even though he is in an infant seat, his arms and legs begin to exercise in a bicycling motion while his face lights up. At times he looks away from Mom, and the excitement diminishes but soon he looks back to her. Quite naturally, she smiles and speaks endearingly. She also carries on her other activities.
The experiments which have been described made use of an optical testing situation which permitted comparative studies, and which allowed the same essential stimulus variables to be applied to a number of different animals. The apparatus designed for the present experiments, which we named the "visual cliff," uses the principle of a drop-off or graduated heights, but gives the animal a choice between a short drop-off on one side of a center board and a long drop-off on the other side. All of the animals studied gave some evidence of discriminating depth at an edge. Even the aquatic turtles tended in general to avoid the deep side, though the preference was not as pronounced as in the other species tested, all of which were terrestrial. The discrimination of depth may be less important for some species than for others, and also less acute in some species than in others. The results in general support a hypothesis of innate depth perception, though the presence of a certain kind of environment during growth may be important for late maturing animals. Furthermore, it has been shown that innate mechanisms for discriminating depth may be supplemented by the acquisition of a learned cue.
Determined the age at which infants call interesting objects to another's attention by pointing, related their ability to follow another's pointing to their own use of the gesture, and compared the uses of pointing and reaching. 48 Ss aged 10–16 mo were studied with their mothers in a setting containing 6 special stimulus objects. By 12.5 mo, most Ss pointed, usually vocalizing or looking at their partner while pointing. The communicative function of the gesture was further established by the partner's response of verbal acknowledgment and looking at the object. The ability to follow another's points seemed to be acquired before Ss began to point but improved with their own use of the gesture. Reaching partook of the behaviors associated with pointing but developed earlier and decreased as pointing increased. Data show that at an early age Ss exhibit an elementary form of the ability to take the visual perspective of others. (12 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Five studies investigated the young infant's ability to produce identifiable emotion expressions as defined in differential emotions theory. Trained judges applied emotion-specific criteria in selecting expression stimuli from videotape recordings of 54 1–9 mo old infants' responses to a variety of incentive events, ranging from playful interactions to the pain of inoculations. Four samples of untrained Ss (130 undergraduates and 62 female health service professionals) confirmed the social validity of infants' emotion expressions by reliably identifying expressions of interest, joy, surprise, sadness, anger, disgust, contempt, and fear. Brief training resulted in significant increases in the accuracy of discrimination of infants' negative emotion expressions for low-accuracy Ss. Construct validity for the 8 emotion expressions identified by untrained Ss and for a consistent pattern of facial responses to unanticipated pain was provided by expression identifications derived from an objective, theoretically structured, anatomically based facial movement coding system. (21 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Studied the development of lipsmacking and grimacing, facial expressions associated with friendliness and fear, respectively, in 26 rhesus monkeys raised under 3 conditions that included visual exposure to (a) monkeys and people, (b) one monkey, (c) neither monkeys nor people. Ss were tested through Life Weeks 1–22 for responses to their mirror image or a human face. Age, stimulus configuration, and experience interacted in the development of the 2 responses. Lipsmacking generally occurred earlier than grimacing and was most frequently elicited by the face. Frequency of lipsmacking increased initially, then declined; in contrast, frequency of grimacing increased progressively throughout testing. Rearing conditions significantly affected age of first response, level of responsiveness, and stimulus differentiation. The most restricted group was oldest at first response, least responsive, and showed the weakest differentiation of stimuli; the most experienced group was at the opposite extreme on these comparisons. (24 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Recorded cardiac and various behavioral reactions of 80 5- and 9-mo-old infants to strangers to determine (a) whether the shift with age from attentiveness to fearfulness of strangers is accompanied by a shift from heart rate (HR) deceleration to acceleration; (b) whether testing infants in the presence of the mother attenuates cardiac and behavioral manifestations of stranger distress; and (c) whether the direction of HR change is related to the direction of change of facial expression, even when age is held constant. Results are generally positive. Behavioral data confirmed that most 5-mo-olds were not frightened by the stranger, and many but not all 9-mo-olds were. HR responses also changed with age, being predominantly deceleratory to the stranger at 5 mo of age and acceleratory at 9 mo. The accelerations were of much greater frequency and larger magnitude when 9-mo-olds were tested in the mother's absence. In contrast, behavioral reactions were not significantly affected by the mother's absence. The direction of HR responding was linked at both ages to affective expression: Whether 5 or 9 mo of age, behaviorally distressed Ss gave progressively acceleratory responses, whereas behaviorally undistressed Ss did not. It is concluded that future studies can profit from careful recording of both HR and behavioral expression in the infant. (21 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Used a variant of the habituation paradigm in a series of experiments investigating the ability of 476 4-mo-old and 70 5-mo-old white infants to discriminate elemental and structural features of the human face. Ss were 1st habituated to a distorted version of a schematic face and following response recovery were shown the intact face. It was expected that the more salient a particular facial attribute was for the infant, the less face-like its distortion would appear to him, and hence the longer would be his subsequent fixation of the regular face. Results of Exp I indicated that at 4 mo the eyes were not only more salient than the mouth but were also seen as a clearly defined structure, and that the head was more prominent than the inner face configuration. Exp II demonstrated that the responding of the most extreme groups in Exp I had been under discriminative control. Exp III revealed that at 5 mo the mouth was as distinctive as the eyes, and the inner face configuration as salient as the head. Overall, the data are consistent with E. J. Gibson's view of the development of early object perception. (22 ref.) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Assessed the role of the mother's availability in promoting infant interest and exploration. It was hypothesized that in an ambiguous situation a mother's signaling of her unavailability would inhibit her infant's exploration. 40 15-mo-old infants and their mothers were successively introduced to 4 novel/unpredictable situations: an unfamiliar playroom, mother changing her seating location, a stranger observing the infant, and a motorized toy. Half of these mothers read a newspaper during the stimulus presentations with their faces clearly visible but with their attention fully engaged in reading. These mothers remained unresponsive to their infants' requests for attention. The remaining mothers served as a nonreading contrast group by watching their infants during the same stimulus presentations and responding sensitively to infant requests. Infants in the maternal reading condition exhibited less pleasure and less exploration. They stayed closer to their mothers but had a less active interest in them and made fewer bids for their attention. The emotional nature of the mother's availability is discussed in the context of attachment theory. (19 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Affect is considered by most contemporary theories to be postcognitive,
that is, to occur only after considerable cognitive operations have
been accomplished. Yet a number of experimental results on preferences,
attitudes, impression formation, and decision making, as well as
some clinical phenomena, suggest that affective judgments may be
fairly independent of, and precede in time, the sorts of perceptual
and cognitive operations commonly assumed to be the basis of these
affective judgments. Affective reactions to stimuli are often the
very first reactions of the organism, and for lower organisms they
are the dominant reactions. Affective reactions can occur without
extensive perceptual and cognitive encoding, are made with greater
confidence than cognitive judgments, and can be made sooner. Experimental
evidence is presented demonstrating that reliable affective discriminations
(likedislike ratings) can be made in the total absence of recognition
memory (oldnew judgments). Various differences between judgments
based on affect and those based on perceptual and cognitive processes
are examined. It is concluded that affect and cognition are under
the control of separate and partially independent systems that can
influence each other in a variety of ways, and that both constitute
independent sources of effects in information processing. (139 ref)
(PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2009 APA, all rights reserved)
The Infant Temperament Questionnaire, originally published in 1970, has been revised to improve its psychometric characteristics. The number of items was increased from 70 to 95, rating options were increased from three to six, more items have high-low reversals, and they are randomized as to content area. The new form was standardized on 203 4- to 8-month-old infants. Good test-retest reliability was maintained and internal consistency of the nine categories was raised to a higher level, thereby assuring a greater reliability of the instrument. These improvements should enhance the questionnaire's use in clinical and research applications.
Researchers interested in the developing mother—infant relationship have observed that beginning in early infancy there is already a complex nonverbal communication system (Bowlby, 1969; Brazelton, Koslowski, & Main, 1974; Stern, 1977). We agree with Darwin (1872) that a critical aspect of this “first language of infancy” is that emotional signals are reciprocally exchanged between mother and infant.
The infant enters into the world. It is a social world full of conspecifics, a small segment of which shares his gene pool, a larger segment who will influence him, and, finally, the largest segment that forms the background in which these other interactions will take place. The smallest segment we call the family, the larger, his friends, acquaintances, and peers, and the largest segment, the culture. The people who populate the child’s world are many and the behavior they direct toward the child varied. In order to explore the child as a member of its social group or network, it is necessary to explore some ideas concerning the social objects and social functions of the child’s world.
This philosophical essay is a critique of some popular views of the concept of affect. It is neither a theory of emotion nor a synthetic review of the extensive literature on this topic—excellent reviews can be found in Mandler (1975), Izard (1971), Plutchik (1962), and Reymert (1950). Its aims are far less ambitious: to suggest a new way to conceptualize the phenomena that have traditionally been called affective. Although I am critical of some current work in this area of inquiry, I do not wish to imply that the phenomena that have been called emotional are unimportant. Quite the opposite; these events must be represented in the written propositions that eventually will describe and explain human behavior. Hence, the critical tone is meant to be constructive and not derogatory.
In its most general form, the discrepancy hypothesis states that an organism attends and affectively responds to new stimuli as an inverted-U function of the stimuli’s physical or conceptual discrepancy (i.e., dissimilarity) from a well-familiarized standard stimulus. That is, moderate discrepancies from highly familiar stimuli receive both the highest degree of attention and positive affect, whereas stimuli that are quite familiar or extremely different from what the organism knows well receive relatively less attention and less positive—perhaps even negative—affective responses and evaluations. The hypothesis is presented graphically in Figure 1.
This story, one of description, began as a bothersome byroad in a research odyssey concerned with understanding emotional development, but it has now become an absorbing adventure in its own right. Our program started in what seemed like a direct and simple fashion, first with studies of babies who smiled and then with babies who cried. We studied these behaviors in multiple contexts, physiological, social, and developmental (Emde & Harmon, 1972; Emde, Gaensbauer, & Harmon, 1976), but then, as psychiatrists, we encountered a concern. In the course of our longitudinal studies, we became increasingly bothered by a nagging question: How did we know that what we were calling emotional in babies was related to the later emotional experience that older patients talk about and that we find so central in our clinical work? Obviously, the preverbal infant could not tell us how he felt. In using a variety of viewpoints to bear on this problem, we soon learned that defining or “indexing” emotions by physiological or situational correlates alone was unreliable and made little sense. But as we continued our longitudinal studies, both in the home and in the laboratory, we reassured ourselves with one view, firmly rooted in the naturalistic setting. When we concentrated on viewing emotions as expressions, as nonverbal communications, we were reassured because we found that facial expressions and other behaviors that we presumed to call emotional regularly communicated (1) feelings and (2) messages for caretaking and social interaction, and that both of these were meaningful for parents. Nonetheless, our observations were at the anecdotal-descriptive level, and we realized that more systematic efforts were needed.
Empathy has long been a topic of interest in psychology, but its nature and development have not been systematically treated. I have for some time been working on a comprehensive theoretical model for empathy, and in this paper, I present the most recent version of this model.
During the past decade evidence from cross-cultural studies of emotions has provided strong confirmation for Darwin’s century-old hypothesis that there is continuity of facial expressions in animals and human beings and that the facial expressions of certain emotions are innate and universal. Scherer’s chapter argues that the vocal expressions of certain emotions also show evolutionary continuity and universality. The adaptive advantages of vocal expression over facial expression are obvious in situations where darkness or distance would prevent social communication by way of the facial-visual system.
We have two major objectives in this chapter. One is to present empirical evidence confirming the existence of an unexpected developmental shift in emotional expression in the human infant, and the second is to discuss the role of a number of possible determinants of this shift.
Recognition of emotion may be intuitive and immediate; this does not preclude the intervention of much knowledge and experience. It may consist of phenomenally immediate integrations in simple or well-known situations. Recognition of emotion often consists of conscious hypotheses and self-corrections, and it often involves explicit inferential activities, utilizations of former experiences, and reasonings by analogy. Based largely upon immediate appreciation of the positional, relational meaning of expressive behavior, recognition of emotion is a complex process that may vary from the immediately evident to the fully conscious making of plausible guesses. This applies, in particular, when one understands, or tries to understand, other people's inner experiences. To explain this puzzling human possibility, the classical theories of reasoning by analogy or empathy have been developed. Critics of these theories have objected that in most instances, nothing of the sort seems to occur. They are right, because perceiving the positional aspects of behavior seen in a situation does not involve attribution of inner experience or the cognitive activities necessary for it. However, when a gap exists between behavior and the meaning of the environment, such attribution may occur.
We used the visual preference and habituation paradigms to investigate the ability of 3-month-olds to recognize the photographed face of the mother and to discriminate it from another face. Infants discriminated between the pictures of the mother and a stranger, both in the preference test and in the recognition test after habituation. These findings suggest that, at least by 3 months of age, infants can recognize something about the mother's face in a picture. Initially, infants preferred the mother's face, but modified their preference after repeated exposure to her photograph. Thus, an infant's preference for an object may depend on the amount of exposure he has had to it, and may reflect different stages of recognition.
An infant control habituation-recovery procedure was used to study 3-month-old infants' discrimination of sad, happy, and surprise facial expressions. 24 experimental infants were habituated to a facial expression and then presented another expression. Following response decrement to the second expression, a third expression was presented. Discrimination was measured by increases in looking time following presentation of a new expression. Relative to 12 no-stimulus-change control subjects, the results indicated that the experimental subjects significantly discriminated the surprise from the happy and, sometimes, from the sad expressions. Prior research assessing infant discrimination of facial expressions by comparing overall fixation times had not found significant effects earlier than 5 months. The fact that no significant differences in mean looking time were found in the present study indicates that the habituation-recovery paradigm is a more sensitive procedure for measuring infant facial discrimination.
The effects of stranger race and size, stranger movement, and parent and stranger proximity on infant response were studied for 32 Caucasian infants between the ages of 4 and 24 months. In general, there was more receptive response to smaller strangers, white strangers, lower levels of stranger proximity, higher levels of parent proximity, and less stranger movement. Infants who were in the theorized sensitive stage for stranger anxiety were more likely to be less receptive to strangers and to be more affected by the experimental variables. The results were interpreted within a survival perspective which viewed infants as actors who behave as if they are assessing survival benefits and risks involved in various stranger approach situations. The relationship of this perspective to cognitive explanations of infant response was discussed.
A series of 5 experiments explored the 7-month infant's ability to discriminate among photos of faces. The infant's tendency to choose novel visual targets for inspection provides evidence of discrimination and recognition. 2 initial experiments demonstrated the infants' ability to discriminate among photos of adult male faces and among poses of the same man's face. In the third, fourth, and fifth experiments, some variant of a face that had been previously exposed served as the "familiar" target on recognition testing. The aim was to see if the infant was capable of identifying the variant of the previously seen face. 3 examples of this ability to detect features common to 2 instances of faces were demonstrated: Features common to different poses of a man's face were recognized; infants responded to invariance in pose; and infants identified a face as familiar on recognition testing when another instance of that same-sex face had been presented for initial examination. Providing multiple instances of the same-sex face prior to recognition testing facilitated the latter identification task.
1. It is not possible to treat mammalian vocalisations and facial expressions in terms of a drive model. They can be best described as basically dependent on
Several of the problems the author was interested in are: establishing the developmental pattern of the smiling reaction and the age-range within which it is manifested, investigating the conditions for provoking the infant's smiling response, and investigating the significance of the response as an emotional manifestation. A total of 251 children varying in age from birth to 6 months served as subjects. The results indicate that it is not the
human face—its human quality—which acts as a stimulus for the smiling response, but that the stimulus is a configuration consisting of certain elements
within the human face, combined with motion. After the sixth month the smiling pattern as a response to anybody and everybody disappears. The smiling reaction is believed to be an indicator of the emotional maturation of the child during its first half year. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
The concept of "emotion-as-motivation" is challenged on theoretical and empirical grounds and emotion as a response is offered as the alternative. Theoretical relations between the "intertwined concepts" of adaptation and emotion are discussed. Emotion is "said to flow from appraisal processes by which the person or infrahuman animal evaluated the adaptive significance of the stimulus." A review of empirical research on emotion involving appraisal and reappraisal of threat under laboratory conditions is presented. (132 ref.) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Describes methods for determining sidedness and eye dominance in infants under 12 wk. of age, in 2-5 yr. olds, and in Ss over 5 yr. of age. The effects of imitation on developing left or right handedness is discussed. Research is noted which indicates the deleterious effects of crossed dominance. It is suggested that those children and adults who are experiencing ill effects due to crossed dominance should be encouraged to change their handedness. Methods for changing handedness are discussed. The beneficial aspects of a club which was developed for left handed students are described. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Social referencing—the receipt and use of other persons' interpretations of a situation to form one's own understanding of that situation—influences much human behavior. The present author evaluates the degree to which the social-referencing perspective provides a valid explanation of some features of infant behavior. Findings indicate that research on infant social behavior and cognitive functioning suggests that the requisite skills for social referencing develop in the 2nd half-year. The 1st direct studies of this process have found that others' interpretations influence infant response by the end of the 1st yr. It is concluded that social referencing appears to influence infants in many of the same ways as it affects children and adults. (5 p ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
The problem was (1) to determine the ability of judges to detect the emotion intended to be portrayed by a trained vocalist, and (2) to detect the emotions of infants under 12 days of age by their crying. The observers, graduate students in psychology, 2d and 3d year medical students, and student nurses who had had experience with infants, varied in number from 23 to 32. The stimuli were delay of feeding by 10 or 15 minutes, being dropped a distance of one foot, restraining of the face on the table, and four needle pricks. The judges varied widely in their decisions; 11 emotions were named, the most frequent being colic, hunger, pain, and fear. Cries enduring 2 or 3 minutes, then subsiding, and increasing in intensity rhythmically, suggested hunger. A sharp, loud cry of short duration suggested pain. When however the crying was long, intermittent, subsiding, and recurring with sudden intensity, it was judged as being due to colic. In the second part of the experiment, a trained vocalist denoted a certain emotion by repeating behind a screen a single note five times, each time for a period of 1½ seconds, in a constant loudness and pitch. The emotions which attempts were made to depict were surprise, fear and pain, sorrow, and anger and hate. In general the judges named 22 emotions for the above 4; but 18 of 22 judges correctly named sorrow, and 12 of 14 correctly named anger and hate. Six tables, one figure, and one reference. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Human ethology is defined as the biology of human behavior. The methods it employs and the questions it poses are elaborations of those generally used in the various fields of biology, but especially adapted to the study of man. Observation and experimentation in the natural and seminatural setting as well as the comparative method derived from morphology play important roles in human ethology, and the exploration of phylogenetic adaptations constitutes one of its focal interests. On the basis of observations on experientially deprived and nondeprived children, comparative primate and animal behavior studies, and cross-cultural investigations, certain universal phylogenetic adaptations (in terms of fixed action patterns, innate releasing mechanisms, releasers, innate motivating mechanisms, and innate learning dispositions) have been found to occur. However, human ethology does not restrict itself to the investigation of phylogenetic adaptations. The question as to how a behavior pattern contributes to survival can be posed with respect to cultural patterns as well. Similar selection pressures have shaped both culturally and phylogenetically evolved patterns. Through cross-cultural studies a number of universal social interaction strategies have been discovered.
This study investigated infant attention to the human face. A set of stimuli consisting of Mother, a Stranger, a manneQuin, a schematic Face, and a Geometric stimulus was presented to one-, three-, and five-month-old infants in paired comparison trials in order to examine the influence of familiarity, animation, complexity, and facial configuration on infants' attention. There were several exemplars of each stimulus so that the results generalize beyond specific stimuli. Across several analyses of looking behavior, infants ranked the stimuli, S-M-Q-F-G, indicating that a particular combination of characteristics makes the human face interesting to infants. Infants' ordering of the stimuli was dependent on two factors relating to animation and complexity. Infants at all ages preferred the complex animated faces. The preference for complex and unfamiliar faces increased with age. Relative to other characteristics, facial configuration was not of special importance to infants' attention.
The ability of 18-, 24-, and 30-week-old infants to learn conceptual categories regarding adult female faces was examined using a habituation paradigm. Little evidence for conceptual categorization occurred at 18 or 24 weeks, but at 30 weeks infants learned to respond to "a specific female face regardless of orientation" and to "female faces in general."
Although recent studies have convincingly demonstrated that emotional expressions can be judged reliably from actor-posed facial displays, there exists little evidence that facial expressions in lifelike settings are similar to actor-posed displays, are reliable across situations designed to elicit the same emotion, or provide sufficient information to mediate consistent emotion judgments by raters. The present study therefore investigated these issues as they related to the emotions of happiness, surprise, and fear. 27 infants between 10 and 12 months of age (when emotion masking is not likely to confound results) were tested in 2 situations designed to elicit hapiness (peek-a-boo game and a collapsing toy), 2 to elicit surprise (a toy-switch and a vanishing-object task), and 2 to elicit fear (the visual cliff and the approach of a stranger. Dependent variables included changes in 28 facial response components taken from previous work using actor poses, as well as judgments of the presence of 6 discrete emotions. In addition, instrumental behaviors were used to verify with other than facial expression responses whether the predicted emotion was elicited. In contrast to previous conclusions on the subject, we found that judges were able to make all facial expression judgments reliably, even in the absence of contextual information. Support was also obtained for at least some degree of specificity of facial component response patterns, especially for happiness and surprise. Emotion judgments by raters were found to be a function of the presence of discrete facial components predicted to be linked to those emotions. Finally, almost all situations elicited blends, rather than discrete emotions.
The normal feedback infants receive from their mothers in face-to-face interaction was distorted by having the mothers face their infants but remain facially unresponsive. The infants studied reacted with intense wariness and eventual withdrawal, demonstrating the importance of interactional reciprocity and the ability of infants to regulate their emotional displays.
The eye movements of infants, aged 4–5, 7–8, and 10–11 weeks, were recorded while they viewed either a representation of a face or a nonface stimulus. Presentation of the visual stimulus was paired with the presentation of an auditory stimulus (either voice or tone) or silence. Attention to the visual stimulus was greater for the older two groups than for the youngest group. The effect of the addition of sound was to increase attention to the visual stimulus. In general, the face was looked at more than the nonface stimulus. The difference in visual attention between the face and the nonface stimulus did not appear to be based solely on the physical characteristics of the stimuli. A sharp increase in the amount of looking at the eyes of the face stimulus at 7–8 weeks of age seemed to be related to a developing appreciation of the meaning of the face as a pattern.
The ability of 8-week-old infants to discriminate between projected stereograms with and without retinal disparity was tested with an habituation-dishabituation paradigm. Infants in two experimental groups received six trials with either the disparity or the nondisparity stimulus and then were given two trials with the other display. Infants in two control groups viewed the same stimulus, either disparity or nondisparity, on all eight trials. There was a suggestion of some response decrement over time in both cardiac deceleration and sucking suppression, although this effect was not significant. However, significant increment was obtained on the dishabituation trials for heart rate in the group that was shifted from the nondisparity to the disparity stimulus. These results were interpreted as indicating that the infants could discriminate between stimuli when the only difference between them was binocular disparity.
Visual fixations of 3- to 5-week-old, 7-week-old, and 9- to 11-week-old infants were recorded as they scanned an adult's face which was stationary, moving, or talking. A dramatic increase in face fixations occurred between 5 and 7 weeks for all conditions. Talking produced an intensification of scanning in the eye area in the two older groups.
By three weeks of age, the human neonate demonstrates behaviours which are quite different with an object and with a human interactant. He also demonstrates an expectancy for interaction with his caregiver which has clearly defined limits, as demonstrated behaviourally. In microanalysis of videotape, we saw regularly a set of interactive behaviours which were demonstrable in optimal face-to-face interaction between infants and their mothers. All parts of the infant's body move in smooth circular patterns as he attends to her. His face-to-face attention to her is rhythmic with approach-withdrawal cycling of extremities. The attention phase and build-up to her cues are followed by turning away and a recovery phase in a rhythm of attention-non-attention which seems to define a cyclical homeostatic curve of attention, averaging several cycles per minute. When she violates his expectancy for rhythmic interaction by presenting a still, unresponsive face to him, he becomes visibly concerned, his movements become jerky, he averts his face, then attempts to draw her into interaction. When repeated attempts fail, he finally withdraws into an attitude of helplessness, face averted, body curled up and motionless. If she returns to her usual interactive responses, he comes alive after an initial puzzled period, and returns to his rhythmic cyclical behaviour which has previously characterized their ongoing face-to-face interaction. This attentional cycling may be diagnostic of optimal mother-infant interactions and seems not to be present in more disturbed interactions.