Читать книгу Lifespan Development - Tara L. Kuther - Страница 308

Early in life, the ability emerges to discriminate facial expressions that indicate emotion. In one study, 2-day-old infants initially did not show a preference for a happy or disgust face, but after being habituated to either a happy or disgust face, they successfully discriminated between the two, suggesting an early sensitivity to dynamic-faced expressing emotions (Addabbo, Longhi, Marchis, Tagliabue, & Turati, 2018). Likewise, newborns are able to discriminate happy faces from fearful ones (Farroni, Menon, Rigato, & Johnson, 2007). It is thought that infants are innately prepared to attend to facial displays of emotion, because such displays are biologically significant and the ability to recognize them is important for human survival (Leppanen, 2011). Between 2 and 4 months of age, infants can distinguish emotional expressions, including happiness as opposed to anger, surprise, and sadness (Bornstein, Arterberry, & Lamb, 2013). Infants 6½ months old can identify and match happy, angry, and sad emotions portrayed on faces but also body movements indicating emotion (Hock et al., 2017).

Beyond recognizing the emotional expressions of others, infants also respond to them. Between 6 and 10 months of age, infants begin to use social referencing, looking to caregivers’ or other adults’ emotional expressions to find clues for how to interpret ambiguous events, which influences their emotional responses and subsequent actions (Walle, Reschke, & Knothe, 2017). For example, when a toddler grabs the sofa to pull herself up, turns, and tumbles over as she takes a step, she will look to her caregiver to determine how to interpret her fall. If the caregiver has a fearful facial expression, the infant is likely to be fearful also, but if the caregiver smiles, the infant will probably remain calm and return to attempts at walking. The use of social referencing is one way that infants demonstrate their understanding that others experience their own emotions and thoughts.

Older infants tend to show a negativity bias when it comes to social referencing. That is, they attend to and follow social referencing cues more closely when the cues indicate negative attitudes toward an object, compared with neutral or happy attitudes (Vaish, Grossmann, & Woodward, 2008). In addition, infants may be more influenced by the vocal information conveyed in emotional messages than the facial expressions themselves, especially within the context of fearful messages (Biro, Alink, van IJzendoorn, & Bakermans-Kranenburg, 2014).

How infants employ social referencing changes with development. Ten-month-old infants show selective social referencing. They monitor the caregiver’s attention and do not engage in social referencing when the adult is not attending or engaged (Stenberg, 2017). At 12 months, infants use referential cues such as the caregiver’s body posture, gaze, and voice direction to determine to what objects caregivers’ emotional responses refer (Brooks & Meltzoff, 2008). Twelve-month-old infants are more likely to use a caregiver’s cues as guides in ambivalent situations when the caregiver responds promptly to the infants’ behavior (Stenberg, 2017). In sum, social referencing reflects infants’ growing understanding of the emotional states of others; it signifies that infants can observe, interpret, and use emotional information from others to form their own interpretation and response to events.