Infant Sensitivity to Televised Emotional Displays

De Pauw University, Greencastle IN

Investigators

Abstract

[unreadable] DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): One of the most significant developments in the emotional life of infants is social referencing. Social referencing occurs when infants regulate their behavior toward an undefined object or event as a function of the emotional expressions of another. One of the most striking gaps in our knowledge is how adults' emotional expressions on television influence infants' emotional displays and reactions. The lack of empirical attention given to this topic is surprising given that infants watch an average of 1.5 hours of TV per day. The broad goal of this proposal is to initiate a program of research that extends significantly our knowledge of how televised emotional displays influence infant emotional behavior. The first specific aim is to investigate the separate and joint effects of an adult's televised facial and vocal emotional expressions on infants' emotional behaviors toward novel objects. This aim will be met by conducting a study in which 90 12-month- old infants will be exposed to a television depicting an adult emoting neutrally toward a novel object during a baseline trial followed by an expression trial in which the adult will be emoting negatively or positively in one of three conditions: (a) face-only, (b) voice-only, or (c) face and voice together. It is predicted that that infants will regulate their emotional behavior toward novel objects as a function of an adult's televised bimodal and vocal emotional expressions, but not when facial expressions are presented alone. The second aim is to investigate the retention effects of an adult's televised emotional expressions on infants' emotional behaviors toward novel objects. That is, do televised emotional displays guide infant behavior beyond the immediate context? Study 2 employs a paradigm similar to study 1, but a delay will be interposed between the period 60, 14-month-old infants are exposed to an adult's emotional displays (neutral, positive, or negative) toward an object and the time when the novel object is presented to them. It is predicted that infants' instrumental behaviors toward novel objects, but not their emotional displays, will be regulated as a function of an adult's televised emotional displays. The information derived from the proposed experiments will provide a solid foundation for continued, more detailed studies of the regulatory effects of adults' emotional displays on infant behavior. The findings will not only add to the basic science of emotional communication in infancy, but will have implications for the development for the development of educational media for infants. Relevance to public health: The proposed studies address a very important, but severely neglected topic of investigation: how infants process televised emotional information. Specifically, the studies will investigate how an adult's facial and vocal expressions of emotion regulate infants and how infant memory plays a role in the processing of televised emotional displays. [unreadable] [unreadable] [unreadable]