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Experience is Instrumental in Tuning a Link Between Language and Cognition: Evidence from 6- to 7- Month-Old Infants' Object Categorization
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Infants' use of attentional cues to identify the referent of another person's emotional expression

B M Repacholi1

  • 1Department of Psychology, University of California, Berkeley, USA. brepacho@bunyip.bhs.mq.edu.au

Developmental Psychology
|October 21, 1998
PubMed

Insights

Infants understand emotional cues, identifying the target of happiness or disgust directed at objects within boxes. This ability to interpret social signals develops early, even when objects are hidden.

Area of Science:

  • Developmental Psychology
  • Cognitive Science
  • Infant Studies

Background:

  • Understanding social cues is crucial for infant development.
  • Previous research suggests infants can interpret emotional expressions.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate 14- and 18-month-old infants' ability to identify the target of an emotional display.
  • To determine if infants can link emotional expressions to specific objects, even when hidden.

Main Methods:

  • Infants were presented with two boxes, each containing a hidden object.
  • An experimenter displayed happiness or disgust towards one of the boxes.
  • Infants' exploration and object selection were observed in both visual and tactile tasks.

Main Results:

  • Infants successfully identified the target of the emotional display, focusing on the object inside the box.
  • Infants preferred to interact with the object associated with the happy emotion.
  • Performance was consistent across different age groups and task modalities.

Conclusions:

  • Infants can accurately interpret the target of emotional expressions, even when the target is not directly visible.
  • Attentional cues, such as gaze and action, aid infants in understanding the referential nature of emotional communication.
  • This demonstrates an early-emerging capacity for inferring communicative intent in infants.

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