Infants' perception of dynamic affective expressions: Do infants distinguish specific expressions?

Seven-month-old infants' perception of positive (happy, interested) and neg ative (angry, sad) affective expressions was investigated using a preferent ial looking procedure (n = 20 in each of 6 conditions). The infants saw two videotaped facial expressions and heard a single vocal expression concorda nt with one of the facial expressions. The voice on the soundtrack was play ed 5 s out of synchrony with the ongoing affective visual display. Infants participated in one of six conditions (all possible pairs of the four expre ssive events). Infants' visual fixations to the affectively concordant and affectively discordant displays were recorded. Infants looked longer at the affectively concordant displays than at the affectively discordant display s in all conditions except the happy/sad and interested/sad conditions. For these two comparisons, facial discrimination was demonstrated by the infan ts' preferential looking at happy and interested expressions compared to th e sad expression. Thus, 7-month-old infants discriminate among happy, inter ested, angry, and sad expressions, demon strating differentiation among spe cific, dynamic expressions. The results are discussed in terms of the infor mation specifying facial and vocal affect and the possible role of familiar ity in learning to differentiate among affective expressions during infancy .