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Categorical perception of facial expressions by 7-month-old infants.

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Kotsoni, E de Haan, M Johnson, M H

Recent research indicates that adults show categorical perception of facial expressions of emotion. It is not known whether this is a basic characteristic of perception that is present from the earliest weeks of life, or whether it is one that emerges more gradually with experience in perceiving and interpreting expressions. We report two experiments designed to investigate whether young infants, like adults, show categorical perception of facial expressions. 7-month-old infants were shown photographic quality continua of interpolated (morphed) facial expressions derived from two prototypes of fear and happiness. In the first experiment, we used a visual-preference technique to identify the infants' category boundary between happiness and fear. In the second experiment, we used a combined familiarisation-visual-preference technique to compare infants' discrimination of pairs of expressions that were equally physically different but that did or did not cross the emotion-category boundary. The results suggest that 7-month-old infants (i) show evidence of categorical perception of facial expressions of emotion, and (ii) show persistent interest in looking at fearful expressions.

Document type Article de périodique (Journal article) – Journal Article, Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't
Publication date 2001
Journal information "Perception" - Vol. 30, no. 9, p. 1115-25 (2001)
Peer reviewed yes
issn 0301-0066
Publication status Publié
Affiliation UCL
MESH Subject Child Psychology ; Child, Preschool ; Discrimination (Psychology) ; Emotions ; Facial Expression ; Fear ; Female ; Happiness ; Humans ; Infant ; Male ; Pattern Recognition, Visual ; Photic Stimulation - methods
Links
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Bibliographic reference Kotsoni, E ; de Haan, M ; Johnson, M H. Categorical perception of facial expressions by 7-month-old infants.. In: Perception, Vol. 30, no. 9, p. 1115-25 (2001)
Permanent URL http://hdl.handle.net/2078.1/8983