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Tuning the developing brain to emotional body expressions
Author(s) -
Missana Manuela,
Atkinson Anthony P.,
Grossmann Tobias
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
developmental science
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.801
H-Index - 127
eISSN - 1467-7687
pISSN - 1363-755X
DOI - 10.1111/desc.12209
Subject(s) - psychology , orientation (vector space) , developmental psychology , lateralization of brain function , emotional expression , typically developing , cognitive psychology , reading (process) , right hemisphere , cognition , neuroscience , geometry , mathematics , autism , political science , law
Reading others' emotional body expressions is an essential social skill. Adults readily recognize emotions from body movements. However, it is unclear when in development infants become sensitive to bodily expressed emotions. We examined event‐related brain potentials ( ERP s) in 4‐ and 8‐month‐old infants in response to point‐light displays ( PLD s) of happy and fearful body expressions presented in two orientations (upright and inverted). The ERP results revealed that 8‐month‐olds but not 4‐month‐olds respond sensitively to the orientation and the emotion of the dynamic expressions. Specifically, 8‐month‐olds showed (i) an early (200–400 ms) orientation‐sensitive positivity over frontal and central electrodes, and (ii) a late (700–1100 ms) emotion‐sensitive positivity over temporal and parietal electrodes in the right hemisphere. These findings suggest that orientation‐sensitive and emotion‐sensitive brain processes, distinct in timing and topography, develop between 4 and 8 months of age.