Infants’ sensitivity to emotional expressions in actions: The contributions of parental expressivity and motor experience

Lisanne Schröer; Deniz Çetin; Stefania V. Vacaru; Margaret Addabbo; Johanna E. van Schaik; Sabine Hunnius

doi:10.1016/j.infbeh.2022.101751

Infants’ sensitivity to emotional expressions in actions: The contributions of parental expressivity and motor experience

Lisanne Schröer^*, Deniz Çetin, Stefania V. Vacaru, Margaret Addabbo, Johanna E. van Schaik, Sabine Hunnius

^*Corresponding author for this work

Clinical Child and Family Studies

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › Academic › peer-review

3 Citations (Scopus)

71 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

Actions can convey information about the affective state of an actor. By the end of the first year, infants show sensitivity to such emotional information in actions. Here, we examined the mechanisms contributing to infants’ developing sensitivity to emotional action kinematics. We hypothesized that this sensitivity might rely on two factors: a stable motor representation of the observed action to be able to detect deviations from how it would typically be performed and experience with emotional expressions. The sensitivity of 12- to 13-month-old infants to happy and angry emotional cues in a manual transport action was examined using facial EMG. Infants’ own movements when performing an object transport task were assessed using optical motion capture. The infants’ caregivers’ emotional expressivity was measured using a questionnaire. Negative emotional expressivity of the primary caregiver was significantly related to infants’ sensitivity to observed angry actions. There was no evidence for such an association with infants’ own motor skill. Overall, our results show that infants’ experience with emotions, measured as caregivers’ emotional expressivity, may aid infants’ discrimination of others’ emotions expressed in action kinematics.

Original language	English
Article number	101751
Journal	Infant Behavior and Development
Volume	68
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1016/j.infbeh.2022.101751
Publication status	Published - Aug 2022

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
This research received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 Marie Skłodowska-Curie ITN project MOTION (grant agreement n° 765298) and an NWO Aspasia prize. The authors would like to thank all families for their participation in this study, Angela Khadar and Rosa Pranger for their help with recruitment, Dewi Heijs for her help with coding, Erik van den Berge, Marta Bakker, and Janny Stapel for their help with the motion capture set-up, and Erik Verhaar for his help with analyzing the video stimuli and advice on analyzing the kinematic data.

Funding Information:
This research received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Marie Skłodowska-Curie ITN project MOTION (grant agreement n° 765298 ) and an NWO Aspasia prize . The authors would like to thank all families for their participation in this study, Angela Khadar and Rosa Pranger for their help with recruitment, Dewi Heijs for her help with coding, Erik van den Berge, Marta Bakker, and Janny Stapel for their help with the motion capture set-up, and Erik Verhaar for his help with analyzing the video stimuli and advice on analyzing the kinematic data.

Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 Elsevier Inc.

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10.1016/j.infbeh.2022.101751

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Cite this

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title = "Infants{\textquoteright} sensitivity to emotional expressions in actions: The contributions of parental expressivity and motor experience",

abstract = "Actions can convey information about the affective state of an actor. By the end of the first year, infants show sensitivity to such emotional information in actions. Here, we examined the mechanisms contributing to infants{\textquoteright} developing sensitivity to emotional action kinematics. We hypothesized that this sensitivity might rely on two factors: a stable motor representation of the observed action to be able to detect deviations from how it would typically be performed and experience with emotional expressions. The sensitivity of 12- to 13-month-old infants to happy and angry emotional cues in a manual transport action was examined using facial EMG. Infants{\textquoteright} own movements when performing an object transport task were assessed using optical motion capture. The infants{\textquoteright} caregivers{\textquoteright} emotional expressivity was measured using a questionnaire. Negative emotional expressivity of the primary caregiver was significantly related to infants{\textquoteright} sensitivity to observed angry actions. There was no evidence for such an association with infants{\textquoteright} own motor skill. Overall, our results show that infants{\textquoteright} experience with emotions, measured as caregivers{\textquoteright} emotional expressivity, may aid infants{\textquoteright} discrimination of others{\textquoteright} emotions expressed in action kinematics.",

author = "Lisanne Schr{\"o}er and Deniz {\c C}etin and Vacaru, {Stefania V.} and Margaret Addabbo and {van Schaik}, {Johanna E.} and Sabine Hunnius",

note = "Funding Information: This research received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 Marie Sk{\l}odowska-Curie ITN project MOTION (grant agreement n° 765298) and an NWO Aspasia prize. The authors would like to thank all families for their participation in this study, Angela Khadar and Rosa Pranger for their help with recruitment, Dewi Heijs for her help with coding, Erik van den Berge, Marta Bakker, and Janny Stapel for their help with the motion capture set-up, and Erik Verhaar for his help with analyzing the video stimuli and advice on analyzing the kinematic data. Funding Information: This research received funding from the European Union{\textquoteright}s Horizon 2020 Marie Sk{\l}odowska-Curie ITN project MOTION (grant agreement n° 765298 ) and an NWO Aspasia prize . The authors would like to thank all families for their participation in this study, Angela Khadar and Rosa Pranger for their help with recruitment, Dewi Heijs for her help with coding, Erik van den Berge, Marta Bakker, and Janny Stapel for their help with the motion capture set-up, and Erik Verhaar for his help with analyzing the video stimuli and advice on analyzing the kinematic data. Publisher Copyright: {\textcopyright} 2022 Elsevier Inc.",

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language = "English",

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AU - Addabbo, Margaret

AU - van Schaik, Johanna E.

AU - Hunnius, Sabine

N1 - Funding Information: This research received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 Marie Skłodowska-Curie ITN project MOTION (grant agreement n° 765298) and an NWO Aspasia prize. The authors would like to thank all families for their participation in this study, Angela Khadar and Rosa Pranger for their help with recruitment, Dewi Heijs for her help with coding, Erik van den Berge, Marta Bakker, and Janny Stapel for their help with the motion capture set-up, and Erik Verhaar for his help with analyzing the video stimuli and advice on analyzing the kinematic data. Funding Information: This research received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Marie Skłodowska-Curie ITN project MOTION (grant agreement n° 765298 ) and an NWO Aspasia prize . The authors would like to thank all families for their participation in this study, Angela Khadar and Rosa Pranger for their help with recruitment, Dewi Heijs for her help with coding, Erik van den Berge, Marta Bakker, and Janny Stapel for their help with the motion capture set-up, and Erik Verhaar for his help with analyzing the video stimuli and advice on analyzing the kinematic data. Publisher Copyright: © 2022 Elsevier Inc.

PY - 2022/8

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Infants’ sensitivity to emotional expressions in actions: The contributions of parental expressivity and motor experience

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