NEONATE AND INFANT EMOTION EXPRESSION PERCEIVED BY ADULTS

This exploratory study investigates the meaning that adults attribute to the facial expressions of neonates and young infants using differen t types of scales, and tries to assess whether adult judgments get mor e precise as the infants get older. We videotaped longitudinally six i nfants' facial expressions in 5 everyday life situations at 3 days, 1 month, and 3 months old. Untrained adult decoders had to assess the ac tivation and pleasure/displeasure levels signaled by the isolated vide otaped facial expressions, recognize the stimulus situations, and attr ibute a verbal label to each expression. Our results showed that inter -decoder agreement was higher when the babies' facial expressions were considered as signals of activation or of pleasure/displeasure, and d ecreased significantly when the expressions had to be interpreted as s ignals of specific situations or when a verbal label had to be ascribe d. The specificity and the accuracy of the answers, and inter-decoder agreement, were higher for the older infants.