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Infant Pupil Diameter Changes in Response to Others' Positive and Negative Emotions

It has been suggested that infants resonate emotionally to others' positive and negative affect displays, and that these responses become stronger towards emotions with negative valence around the age of 12-months. In this study we measured 6- and 12-month-old infants' changes in pupil dia...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Geangu, Elena, Hauf, Petra, Bhardwaj, Rishi, Bentz, Wolfram
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2011
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3217958/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22110605
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0027132
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author Geangu, Elena
Hauf, Petra
Bhardwaj, Rishi
Bentz, Wolfram
author_facet Geangu, Elena
Hauf, Petra
Bhardwaj, Rishi
Bentz, Wolfram
author_sort Geangu, Elena
collection PubMed
description It has been suggested that infants resonate emotionally to others' positive and negative affect displays, and that these responses become stronger towards emotions with negative valence around the age of 12-months. In this study we measured 6- and 12-month-old infants' changes in pupil diameter when presented with the image and sound of peers experiencing happiness, distress and an emotionally neutral state. For all participants the perception of another's distress triggered larger pupil diameters. Perceiving other's happiness also induced larger pupil diameters but for shorter time intervals. Importantly, we also found evidence for an asymmetry in autonomous arousal towards positive versus negative emotional displays. Larger pupil sizes for another's distress compared to another's happiness were recorded shortly after stimulus onset for the older infants, and in a later time window for the 6-month-olds. These findings suggest that arousal responses for negative as well as for positive emotions are present in the second half of the first postnatal year. Importantly, an asymmetry with stronger responses for negative emotions seems to be already present at this age.
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spelling pubmed-32179582011-11-21 Infant Pupil Diameter Changes in Response to Others' Positive and Negative Emotions Geangu, Elena Hauf, Petra Bhardwaj, Rishi Bentz, Wolfram PLoS One Research Article It has been suggested that infants resonate emotionally to others' positive and negative affect displays, and that these responses become stronger towards emotions with negative valence around the age of 12-months. In this study we measured 6- and 12-month-old infants' changes in pupil diameter when presented with the image and sound of peers experiencing happiness, distress and an emotionally neutral state. For all participants the perception of another's distress triggered larger pupil diameters. Perceiving other's happiness also induced larger pupil diameters but for shorter time intervals. Importantly, we also found evidence for an asymmetry in autonomous arousal towards positive versus negative emotional displays. Larger pupil sizes for another's distress compared to another's happiness were recorded shortly after stimulus onset for the older infants, and in a later time window for the 6-month-olds. These findings suggest that arousal responses for negative as well as for positive emotions are present in the second half of the first postnatal year. Importantly, an asymmetry with stronger responses for negative emotions seems to be already present at this age. Public Library of Science 2011-11-16 /pmc/articles/PMC3217958/ /pubmed/22110605 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0027132 Text en Geangu et al. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are properly credited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Geangu, Elena
Hauf, Petra
Bhardwaj, Rishi
Bentz, Wolfram
Infant Pupil Diameter Changes in Response to Others' Positive and Negative Emotions
title Infant Pupil Diameter Changes in Response to Others' Positive and Negative Emotions
title_full Infant Pupil Diameter Changes in Response to Others' Positive and Negative Emotions
title_fullStr Infant Pupil Diameter Changes in Response to Others' Positive and Negative Emotions
title_full_unstemmed Infant Pupil Diameter Changes in Response to Others' Positive and Negative Emotions
title_short Infant Pupil Diameter Changes in Response to Others' Positive and Negative Emotions
title_sort infant pupil diameter changes in response to others' positive and negative emotions
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3217958/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22110605
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0027132
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