NEURAL CORRELATES OF INFANTS VISUAL RESPONSIVENESS TO FACIAL EXPRESSIONS OF EMOTION

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.