Study on the Development of Empathy through Positive Emotional Contagion in Infancy

Abstract

Seeing or hearing emotional distress from an infant can create a chain reaction with infants nearby, and cause them to produce signs of distress through facial expressions, body language, references to mothers, and ultimately vocal responses, supporting the concept of emotional contagion. The present project attempts to elicit similar (but opposite) emotional contagion by using positive rather than negative stimuli. A cohort of infants will be presented, at 5 and again at 10 months of age, with an audio only track of infants laughing, a similar track of infants laughing but with audio and video, and a control condition of moving geometric shapes. Each condition will be presented for 2 minutes. Affective responses will be coded from video recorded facial expressions and body movements as well as from cortisol measured from saliva samples. In addition, the EKG will be measured to assess attentional differences among the three conditions. At the 10-month visit, a measure of maternal-infant attachment will also be administered. It is predicted (a) that infants will show more positive facial expressions and more attention (as measured by heart-rate slowing) during the audio-video and audio-only conditions