Ca. Nelson et M. Dehaan, NEURAL CORRELATES OF INFANTS VISUAL RESPONSIVENESS TO FACIAL EXPRESSIONS OF EMOTION, Developmental psychobiology, 29(7), 1996, pp. 577-595
An extensive literature documents the infant's ability to recognize an
d discriminate a variety of facial expressions of emotion. However, li
ttle is known about the neural bases of this ability. To examine the n
eural processes that may underlie infants' responses to facial express
ions, we recorded event-related potentials (ERPs) while 7-month-olds w
atched pictures of a happy face and a fearful face (Experiment 1) or a
n angry face and a fearful face (Experiment 2). In both experiments an
early positive component, a middle-latency negative component and a l
ater positive component were elicited. However, only when the infants
saw the happy and fearful faces did the components differ for the two
expressions. These results are discussed in the context of the neurobi
ological processes involved in perceiving facial expressions. (C) 1996
John Wiley & Sons, Inc.