it\u2019s so easy a baby could do it<\/strong>.<\/p>\nPsychology professor Ross Flom\u2019s study, published in the academic journal Infancy<\/em>, shows that infants can recognize each other\u2019s emotions by five months of age<\/strong>. This study comes on the heels of other significant research by Flom on infants\u2019 ability to understand the moods of dogs, monkeys and classical music.<\/p>\n\u201cNewborns can\u2019t verbalize to their mom or dad that they are hungry or tired, so the first way they communicate is through affect or emotion,\u201d says Flom. \u201cThus it is not surprising that in early development, infants learn to discriminate changes in affect<\/strong>.\u201d<\/p>\nInfants can match emotion in adults at seven months and familiar adults at six months<\/strong>. In order to test infant\u2019s perception of their peer\u2019s emotions, Flom and his team of researchers tested a baby\u2019s ability to match emotional infant vocalizations with a paired infant facial expression.<\/p>\n\u201cWe found that 5 month old infants can match their peer\u2019s positive and negative vocalizations with the appropriate facial expression<\/strong>,\u201d says Flom. \u201cThis is the first study to show a matching ability with an infant this young. They are exposed to affect in a peer\u2019s voice and face which is likely more familiar to them because it\u2019s how they themselves convey or communicate positive and negative emotions.\u201d<\/p>\nIn the study, infants were seated in front of two monitors. One of the monitors displayed video of a happy, smiling baby while the other monitor displayed video of a second sad, frowning baby. When audio was played of a third happy baby, the infant participating in the study looked longer to the video of the baby with positive facial expressions<\/strong>. The infant also was able to match negative vocalizations with video of the sad frowning baby. The audio recordings were from a third baby and not in sync with the lip movements of the babies in either video.<\/p>\n\u201cThese findings add to our understanding of early infant development by reiterating the fact that babies are highly sensitive to and comprehend some level of emotion,\u201d says Flom. \u201cBabies learn more in their first 2 1\/2 years of life than they do the rest of their lifespan<\/strong>, making it critical to examine how and what young infants learn and how this helps them learn other things.\u201d<\/p>\nFlom co-authored the study of 40 infants from Utah and Florida with Professor Lorraine Bahrick from Florida International University.<\/p>\n
Flom\u2019s next step in studying infant perception is to run the experiments with a twist: test whether babies could do this at even younger ages<\/strong> if instead they were watching and hearing clips of themselves.<\/p>\nAnd while the talking twin babies in this popular YouTube clip are older, it’s still a lot of fun to watch them babble at each other.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
From the BYU press release via HealthCanal: \u00a0\u00a0 Although it may seem difficult for adults to understand what an infant is feeling, a new study from Brigham Young University finds that it\u2019s so easy a baby could do it. Psychology professor Ross Flom\u2019s study, published in the academic journal Infancy, shows that infants can recognize… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"neve_meta_sidebar":"","neve_meta_container":"","neve_meta_enable_content_width":"","neve_meta_content_width":0,"neve_meta_title_alignment":"","neve_meta_author_avatar":"","neve_post_elements_order":"","neve_meta_disable_header":"","neve_meta_disable_footer":"","neve_meta_disable_title":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5,9],"tags":[78,13,160,74,12],"class_list":["post-14491","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-emotions","category-parenting","tag-babies","tag-communication","tag-developmental","tag-developmental-psychology","tag-psychology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14491","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14491"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14491\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14671,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14491\/revisions\/14671"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14491"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14491"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14491"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"babies_crying\"](\"http:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/07\/babies_crying.jpg\")
<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0 Although it may seem difficult for adults to understand what an infant is feeling, a new study from Brigham Young University finds that it\u2019s so easy a baby could do it<\/strong>.<\/p>\n