Positive, but not negative, facial expressions facilitate 3-month-olds’ recognition of an individual face

Abstract

The current study examined whether and how the presence of a positive or a negative emotional expression may affect the face recognition process at 3 months of age. Using a familiarization procedure, Experiment 1 demonstrated that positive (i.e., happiness), but not negative (i.e., fear and anger) facial expressions facilitate infants’ ability to recognize an individual face. Experiment 2 showed that the advantage of positive over negative facial expressions is driven by the processing of salient features inherent in the happy expression, rather than by the processing of the configural information conveyed by the entire happy face. Overall, these results support the presence of a mutual interaction between face identity and emotion recognition.