At 18 Months, Babies Match Emotions with Reactions

Kids? Well, they're smart cookies. There's just no fooling these guys. They remember where you hide the Christmas presents, they've tricked you countless times for more cookies before dinner and they won't give up their dirty pajamas even when it's laundry night.  

According to researchers from Concordia University, they've discovered just how little ones can predict and determine emotions that adults are feeling. Lead study authors Sabrina Chiarella and Diane Poulin-Dubois demonstrate how infants can detect whether a person's emotions are justifiable given a particular context.

 "Our research shows that babies cannot be fooled into believing something that causes pain results in pleasure. Adults often try to shield infants from distress by putting on a happy face following a negative experience. But babies know the truth: as early as 18 months, they can implicitly understand which emotions go with which events," psychology professor Poulin-Dubois notes, via a press release.

In order to study this theory, researchers recruited 92 infants at the 15 and 18-month mark. In a lab setting, the babies watched an actor go through several scenarios involving various reactions that went against the obvious associated emotion via pantomime.

At 15 months, the infants were unable to differentiate the reactions to the events and showed empathy to facial expressions of all sad faces. Researchers believe this shows the younger developmental stage of understanding and comprehending emotion.

However, at 18 months, children could more clearly detect when facial expressions did not match up with experiences shown. For instance, these children spent more time looking at researchers faces and checked back more frequently with the caregiver in the room so as to gauge his or her reaction to the actor.

"The ability to detect sadness and then react immediately has an evolutionary implication," Chiarella said, via the release. "However, to function effectively in the social world, children need to develop the ability to understand others' behaviours by inferring what is going on internally for those around them."

What do you think?

More information regarding the study can be found via the journal Infancy: The Official Journal of the International Society on Infant Studies.