One- to four-year-olds connect diverse positive emotional vocalizations to their probable causes
The ability to understand why others feel the way they do is critical to human relationships. Here, we show that emotion understanding in early childhood is more sophisticated than previously believed, extending well beyond the ability to distinguish basic emotions or draw different inferences from...
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| Format: | Article |
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National Academy of Sciences (U.S.)
2018
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| Online Access: | http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/116344 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2981-8039 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0157-4925 |
| _version_ | 1811097623725080576 |
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| author | Muentener, Paul Schulz, Laura E Wu, Yang |
| author2 | Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences |
| author_facet | Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences Muentener, Paul Schulz, Laura E Wu, Yang |
| author_sort | Muentener, Paul |
| collection | MIT |
| description | The ability to understand why others feel the way they do is critical to human relationships. Here, we show that emotion understanding in early childhood is more sophisticated than previously believed, extending well beyond the ability to distinguish basic emotions or draw different inferences from positively and negatively valenced emotions. In a forced-choice task, 2- to 4-year-olds successfully identified probable causes of five distinct positive emotional vocalizations elicited by what adults would consider funny, delicious, exciting, sympathetic, and adorable stimuli (Experiment 1). Similar results were obtained in a preferential looking paradigm with 12- to 23-month-olds, a direct replication with 18- to 23-month-olds (Experiment 2), and a simplified design with 12- to 17-month-olds (Experiment 3; preregistered). Moreover, 12- to 17-month-olds selectively explored, given improbable causes of different positive emotional reactions (Experiments 4 and 5; preregistered). The results suggest that by the second year of life, children make sophisticated and subtle distinctions among a wide range of positive emotions and reason about the probable causes of others’ emotional reactions. These abilities may play a critical role in developing theory of mind, social cognition, and early relationships. Keywords: emotion understanding; emotional vocalizations; causal knowledge; infants preschoolers |
| first_indexed | 2024-09-23T17:02:25Z |
| format | Article |
| id | mit-1721.1/116344 |
| institution | Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
| last_indexed | 2024-09-23T17:02:25Z |
| publishDate | 2018 |
| publisher | National Academy of Sciences (U.S.) |
| record_format | dspace |
| spelling | mit-1721.1/1163442022-10-03T09:59:38Z One- to four-year-olds connect diverse positive emotional vocalizations to their probable causes Muentener, Paul Schulz, Laura E Wu, Yang Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences Schulz, Laura E Wu, Yang The ability to understand why others feel the way they do is critical to human relationships. Here, we show that emotion understanding in early childhood is more sophisticated than previously believed, extending well beyond the ability to distinguish basic emotions or draw different inferences from positively and negatively valenced emotions. In a forced-choice task, 2- to 4-year-olds successfully identified probable causes of five distinct positive emotional vocalizations elicited by what adults would consider funny, delicious, exciting, sympathetic, and adorable stimuli (Experiment 1). Similar results were obtained in a preferential looking paradigm with 12- to 23-month-olds, a direct replication with 18- to 23-month-olds (Experiment 2), and a simplified design with 12- to 17-month-olds (Experiment 3; preregistered). Moreover, 12- to 17-month-olds selectively explored, given improbable causes of different positive emotional reactions (Experiments 4 and 5; preregistered). The results suggest that by the second year of life, children make sophisticated and subtle distinctions among a wide range of positive emotions and reason about the probable causes of others’ emotional reactions. These abilities may play a critical role in developing theory of mind, social cognition, and early relationships. Keywords: emotion understanding; emotional vocalizations; causal knowledge; infants preschoolers 2018-06-15T17:32:13Z 2018-06-15T17:32:13Z 2017-10 2017-05 2018-06-13T15:58:25Z Article http://purl.org/eprint/type/JournalArticle 0027-8424 1091-6490 http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/116344 Wu, Yang et al. “One- to Four-Year-Olds Connect Diverse Positive Emotional Vocalizations to Their Probable Causes.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 114, 45 (October 2017): 11896–11901 © 2017 The Author(s) https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2981-8039 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0157-4925 http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/PNAS.1707715114 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Article is made available in accordance with the publisher's policy and may be subject to US copyright law. Please refer to the publisher's site for terms of use. application/pdf National Academy of Sciences (U.S.) PNAS |
| spellingShingle | Muentener, Paul Schulz, Laura E Wu, Yang One- to four-year-olds connect diverse positive emotional vocalizations to their probable causes |
| title | One- to four-year-olds connect diverse positive emotional vocalizations to their probable causes |
| title_full | One- to four-year-olds connect diverse positive emotional vocalizations to their probable causes |
| title_fullStr | One- to four-year-olds connect diverse positive emotional vocalizations to their probable causes |
| title_full_unstemmed | One- to four-year-olds connect diverse positive emotional vocalizations to their probable causes |
| title_short | One- to four-year-olds connect diverse positive emotional vocalizations to their probable causes |
| title_sort | one to four year olds connect diverse positive emotional vocalizations to their probable causes |
| url | http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/116344 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2981-8039 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0157-4925 |
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