A new study from the Brigham Young University reveals that babies as young as five months can interpret other infants' feelings.
Babies learn a lot more during their first two and a half years than in the rest of their life span. Hence, scientists have always been fascinated by this period in a baby's life. The latest discovery by BYU researchers says that babies can understand their peer's emotions by five months of age.
During the early stages of infancy, it is often a challenge for parents to understand their babies as they cannot verbally communicate.
Ross Flom, associate professor of psychology & neuroscience at the Brigham Young University, conducted the study to assess how infants interpret each other's emotions at such an early age. Previous studies by Flom have shown the ability of infants to understand the moods of dogs and monkeys and even how they respond to Beethoven symphonies.
For the study, Flom and his team paired two babies and tested their abilities to match their peer's emotions. Flom found that a 5-month-old infant responded with appropriate facial expression to its peer's positive or negative vocalizations. The study is the first to show a matching ability of an infant at such a young age, says Flom.
"They are exposed to affect in a peer's voice and face which is likely more familiar to them because it's how they themselves convey or communicate positive and negative emotions," Flom said in a press release.
For the study, researchers placed two monitors in front of infants and showed them a video of a happy and smiling baby in one monitor, while the other played a video of a sad, frowning baby. Researchers then played an audio of a third happy baby. When the infants heard the audio, they looked at the video of a smiling, happy baby. When the researchers played a crying baby audio, infants were able to match the audio with the video of the sad, frowning baby. The audio played in both instances were not lip synced with videos, but still the babies matched them correctly.
Hence, the study shows that babies as young as five months can interpret other babies' emotions. Flom and his team are now further looking to see if an infant's ability to match emotions is developed at an earlier age than five months.
The study is published in the academic journal Infancy.
