Infant-directed emotional expressions in everyday life - the role of parent gender and infant age

Abstract

The ability to recognise and understand emotions develops in infancy, likely starting with the expressions parents make to their infants. Mothers use three particular facial expressions toward their infants that are not commonly displayed in communication with adults (Chong et al., 2003). To date, most research has focused on how mothers emotionally engage with infants, however, less is known about whether fathers, and adults in general, display these same expressions. A new, longitudinal, and naturalistic audio-visual dataset gives us a glimpse of three infant’s point of view captured via headcams, from 6 to 32 months of age (Sullivan et al., 2021). Here, we conduct a secondary data analysis of infant-directed facial expressions captured in the visual dataset, to better understand the types of expressions infants are exposed to in their day-to-day lives, and to examine gender differences in expressivity. Facial expressions were examined using automatic facial expression recognition software, and the data analysed using mixed effects models. We found that, while all adults in the dataset used relatively intense expressions of joy with infants, males expressed emotion more intensely overall compared to females. In addition, we found that both males and females displayed the three unique infant-directed expressions and the use of these expressions changed with infant age. Understanding exactly what facial expressions infants are typically exposed to, what these expressions look like, and who makes these expressions, may help us to better explain how infants come to learn about emotions.

Poster session presented at the Experimental Psychology Conference 2024.

Citation: Palmer, K., Holdsworth, I., Rayner, C., Tuza, A., Van Der Zant, T., & Nelson, N. L. (2024). Infant-directed emotional expressions in everyday life - the role of parent gender and infant age. Poster session presented at the meeting of Experimental Psychology Conference 2024. Adelaide, SA, Australia.