Studies

• Oster (2003) -adults are good at reading facial emotions even if infants have facial disfigurements
• Schaffer (1971) - 3 patterns of crying recognised by mothers?

  Basic crying = starts arrhythmically and builds / mad/angry = phases varying in length / pain = sudden onset, long loud cry - breath holding
• Gustafson & Harris (1990)

  Adult women can differentiate between basic and pain cries (even if they aren't mothers)
• Gustafson & Green (1991)

  infant cries are directed towards the caregiver through gestures
• Bowlby (1969)


  infant survival depends on proximity to caregiver (depends on the signals from infants)
• Caira et al. (2012)


  signals from infants are psychologically and physiologically arousing (adults predisposed to respond)
• Lorenz (1943)


  baby schema
• Glocker et al. (2009)

  baby schema is perceived as cute which induces motivation for caretaking in adults
• Caira et al. (2012)?


  areas of the brain become active as we look at babies faces despite having no biological relations
• Miesler et al. (2011) - cute product design


  baby faced products have more appealing effect in us, we habituate slower to baby faced things
• Wolff (1963)

  2 months infants smile in response to pleasing and gently surprising social stimuli like a smiling face and voice
• Newson & Newson (1963) 


  parents report wanting to spend more time with their infants once they begin smiling (as it aids attachment process)
• Izard et al. (1980)

  infants have variety of expressions to communicate with adults
• Reissland et al. (2013)

  prenatal infants facial expression dramatically increase between 24-34 weeks of gestation
• Sato et al. (2014)

  from 20-24 weeks smiling and scowling can be seen as facial expressions
• Izard & Malatesta (1987)

  from birth babies express basic emotions (sad, disgust, interest)
• Ainsworth (1977)


  Infants reared in non-western cultures who are rarely allowed to cry do not appear to suffer any health or psychological consequences (African tribes where the baby is always with the mum with easy access to breastfeeding and other things)
• Meltzoff and Moore (1977)

  Newborns a few minutes old imitate face expressions of emotion, mouth openings and tongue protrusions that they see in another person
• Imitation: innate process


  Neurons identified in area F5 of Macaque Monkey (Rizzolatti et al. 1998) : ‘Monkey see Monkey Do’
• Mirror Neurons (di Pellegrino et al. 1992)?

  Help understand actions of the other, and thus act as an internal representation for empathy? Broken Mirror Neuron Theory for Social Difficulties?
• Preference (Fantz, 1963)


  Infants are pre-programmed (primitive reflex) so that ‘faces’ grab their attention –
• Johnson & Morton (1991) - exposed 9hr old infants to 3 stimuli moving back and forth at 5 degrees per second. 


  The HUMAN face elicited more looking/tracking than the SCRAMBLED or BLANK face.

  human infants have the ability to process information about faces which is greater than for any other perceptual stimuli?