Emotional facial expressions affect visual rule learning in 7- to 8-month-old infants |
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| Affiliation: | 1. Department of Psychology, University of Milano-Bicocca, Italy;2. NeuroMI, Milan Center for Neuroscience, Italy;1. Department of Psychology, University of Milano-Bicocca, Italy;2. NeuroMI, Milan Center for Neuroscience, Italy;1. Department of Developmental Psychology, Otto-Friedrich University, Bamberg, Germany;2. Department of Psychology, Uppsala University, Sweden;1. The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, USA;2. University of Delaware, DE, USA;3. University of Oregon, Eugene, OR, USA;4. University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA, USA;5. George Washington University, Washington D.C., USA;6. Yale Child Study Center, Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, CT, USA;7. University of California, Riverside, Riverside, CA, USA;1. Department of Linguistics and Translation, International Laboratory for Brain, Music & Sound Research (BRAMS), University of Montreal, C. P. 6128, Succursale Centre-ville, Montréal, Québec H3C 3J7, Canada;2. Department of Psychology, Huron University College at Western, London, Ontario, Canada;1. Department of Primary Education, University of Potsdam, Germany;2. Department of Linguistics, University of Potsdam, Germany;3. Department of Inclusive Education, University of Potsdam, Germany;4. Department of Education and Psychology, Free University of Berlin, Germany |
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| Abstract: | Rule learning (RL) is an implicit learning mechanism that allows infants to detect and generalize rule-like repetition-based patterns (such as ABB and ABA) from a sequence of elements. Increasing evidence shows that RL operates both in the auditory and the visual domain and is modulated by the perceptual expertise with the to-be-learned stimuli. Yet, whether infants’ ability to detect a high-order rule from a sequence of stimuli is affected by affective information remains a largely unexplored issue. Using a visual habituation paradigm, we investigated whether the presence of emotional expressions with a positive and a negative value (i.e., happiness and anger) modulates 7- to 8-month-old infants’ ability to learn a rule-like pattern from a sequence of faces of different identities. Results demonstrate that emotional facial expressions (either positive and negative) modulate infants’ visual RL mechanism, even though positive and negative facial expressions affect infants’ RL in a different manner: while anger disrupts infants’ ability to learn the rule-like pattern from a face sequence, in the presence of a happy face infants show a familiarity preference, thus maintaining their learning ability. These findings show that emotional expressions exert an influence on infants’ RL abilities, contributing to the investigation on how emotion and cognition interact in face processing during infancy. |
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| Keywords: | Rule learning Emotion Infants Face Perceptual expertise |
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