Abstract
Language is important for emotion perception, but very little is known about how emotion labels are learned. The current studies examine how preverbal infants map novel labels onto facial configurations. Across studies, infants were tested with a modified habituation paradigm (“switch design”). Experiments 1 and 2 found that 18-month-olds, but not 14-month-olds, mapped novel labels (“blicket” and “toma”) to human facial configurations associated with happiness and sadness. Subsequent analyses revealed that vocabulary size positively correlated with 14-month-olds’ ability to form the mappings. Experiment 3 found that 14-month-olds were able to map novel labels to facial configurations when the visual complexity of the stimuli was reduced (i.e., by using cartoon facial configurations). This suggests that cognitive maturation and language development influence infants’ associative word learning with facial configurations. The current studies are a critical first step in determining how infants navigate the complex process of learning emotion labels.
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Acknowledgments
The authors thank the Wilbourn Infant Lab at Duke for assistance with data collection.
Funding
ALR was supported by an Emotion Research Training Grant from NIMH (T32-MH018931).
Data Availability
The dataset and analysis code for these studies are available on OSF: https://osf.io/g6zej/?view_only=29d2804f0d6d4f4c996c411ec3f4b4e2.
Conflict of Interest
On behalf of all authors, the corresponding author states that there is no conflict of interest.
Ethical Approval
The study was performed to ethical standards as laid down in the 1964 Declaration of Helsinki and conducted with approval of the institutional review board at Duke University (Approval Number: B0181, Protocol Title: “Early Language Learning: Labels for Emotional Expressions”).
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All parents provided informed consent for their infants to participate in the study.
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Handling editor: Kristen Lindquist
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Ruba, A.L., Harris, L.T. & Wilbourn, M.P. Examining Preverbal Infants’ Ability to Map Labels to Facial Configurations. Affec Sci 2, 142–149 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s42761-020-00015-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s42761-020-00015-9