The Development of Emotion Understanding in Infancy

Abstract

An ongoing debate in affective science concerns whether emotion understanding is (a) an early emerging or innate ability, based in our shared evolutionary history, or (b) an ability that develops slowly over time, shaped by language and social experience. Although many studies suggest that preverbal infants differentiate positive and negative facial expressions (e.g., happy vs. anger), few studies have tested how infants “understand” discrete emotions (e.g., anger vs. disgust). This dissertation presents three papers that explore how infants interpret and categorize discrete emotional expressions across the first two years of life. Paper 1 (Chapter 2) tested whether 14- and 18-month-olds (N = 336) can match specific negative emotions (e.g., disgust) to different negative events (e.g., eating food). Paper 2 (Chapter 3) tested whether 14- and 18-month-olds (N = 272) perceive different facial expressions (e.g., sadness and disgust) as belonging to a superordinate category of negative valence, and whether verbal labels facilitate the formation of this category. Paper 3 (Chapter 4) explored potential changes in 10- and 14-month-olds’ (N = 240) ability to match specific negative emotions to events. Taken together, these findings suggest that preverbal infants’ understanding of discrete emotions is emerging across the first two years of life. In particular, infants may be able to learn about some aspects of discrete emotional emotions (e.g., eliciting events) around 14- to 18-months of age, before the development of emotion language. However, language appears to play a role in constructing infants’ emotion categories. These papers advocate for a revision of existing emotion theories in order to account for the emerging abilities of preverbal infants.