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A recent article by Popular Science  reports on a new study from Psychology professor Ross Flom and colleagues that found babies are able to read each other’s emotional expressions as early as 5 months old.  The study which was published in Infancy journal comes right after similar research  published by Flom on infants’ ability to understand the moods of dogs, monkeys and classical music .

Flom explains that while babies are unable to communicate through language they do learn how to communicate through affect, or emotion.  This implies that not only can they read emotional expressions of their infant peers, but they can perceive and associate changes in those expressions as well.  Flom points out, “… it is not surprising that in early development, infants learn to discriminate changes in affect.”   This change in affect is where babies are able to “read” each other while most adults are left scratching their heads.

The study, held at Brigham Young University which was co-authored by Professor Lorraine Bahrick  and  graduate student Mariana Vaillant-Molina from Florida International University, looked at 40 babies ranging from 3.5 to 5 months old.

The study placed baby participants in front of two monitors.  One displayed a video of a happy baby and the other displayed a video of an unhappy baby.  While the babies were placed in front of the monitors, researchers played audio from a third baby.  The audio was either of a happy, laughing baby or of a sad, crying baby.

Researchers noticed that when the audio reflected happy baby noises the infants focused on the happy baby video and when the audio was sad they looked more to the sad video.

Past studies found that babies (not infants) are able to perceive facial expressions of emotion in familiar adults at 6 months and all other adults by 7 months.  However, this study takes it a step further documenting that infants as young as 5 months (but not as young as 3.5 months) have the capability to perceive and recognize emotional expressions in other infants

Flom substantiates, “These 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.” Flom goes on to say, “Babies learn more in their first 2 1/2 years of life than they do the rest of their lifespan, making it critical to examine how and what young infants learn and how this helps them learn other things.”

Flom would like to take his recent findings a step further by testing whether infants younger than 5 months are able to demonstrate this same level of perception by watching and hearing clips of themselves.

What do you think? Will babies be able to read emotion even earlier if it’s their own?

@StockVault

A study published in PLOS ONE, earlier this week, says that fetuses actually practice their facial expression while in utero.

MedicalXpress noted that the study, which was an eight year project applied Facs, a facial action coding system, used to study adult facial expressions, to the unborn fetuses throughout their development.

The findings were that unborn babies practice making expressions such as crying and smiling as well as pain-like mannerisms, identified by simultaneously furrowing the brow, wrinkling the nose and raising the lip while still in the womb.

The facial images were taken from 4D scans of healthy fetuses.  It was noted that smiling happens earlier on in the pregnancy and more complex expressions such as pain which involves multiple muscles evolve around 36 weeks.

Lead Researcher and senior lecturer in developmental psychology at Durham University, Dr Nadja Reissland, noted, “At the moment there is no link between these expressions and emotions”.

However, researchers do believe that rehearsing these facial expressions in utero allows a new born baby to be able to communicate pain or distress to their parents as soon as they are born, which is a necessary life skill.

To find out more on the study read the entire article.

Photo Courtesy Brian @Stockvault

Want a refresher course on deception?  Below Humintell sums up some of what science has found on lying, liars and microexpressions.

For a brief overview on some Deception and Microexpression Misconceptions read Humintell’s Misconception blogs Part 1 and Part 2 and our Eye Contact Myth blog.

Live Science recently pointed out that if accurate lie-detecting methods can be developed it would have a huge impact on a variety of settings and industries.  As mentioned in many previous blogs, the average person is no better than chance at spotting lies despite what they may think.

Charles Bond and Bella DePaulo’s study, in 2006, found that untrained observers are correct only 54 percent of the time when trying to distinguish between true and false statements.

A 2008 study led by Aldert Vrij, a professor of applied social psychology at the University of Portsmouth in the United Kingdom, found similar results with regards to accuracy rates in distinguishing deception.  (to read more studies on lying from Vrij click here).

Other research has noted that even though untrained individuals are able to spot deception only about 50% of the time, we tend to tell lies (small or large) in bout 25% of our social interactions.

Charles Honts, a professor of psychology at Boise State University in Idaho, points out that across societies, there are false beliefs that certain behavioral clues can indicate someone is lying.  For instance, many people think liars shy away from making eye contact, blink a lot or fidget as they speak.

“Lying is an emotionally exhausting and cognitively demanding task,” notes Dr.  David Matsumoto, a psychologist at San Francisco State University and  Humintell’s director, in an  Inside Science article, “When lies are more complicated it is more difficult to lie.”

Recent studies on lying and deception detection have taken a different routes to understanding the art of lying.  Rather than simply observing someone’s behavior, which can introduce all kinds of biases, psychologists and researchers are looking at whether certain interview methods can prompt liars to respond in ways that reveal their deception.

In a similar article Countrytimes.com suggests a new technique in finding lies quickly in the important time just after an incident such as a bombing, or shooting.