Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

Can infants map diverse positive emotional expressions to their probable causes? Across two studies (includingone pre-registered experiment), we used a preferential-looking task to find that infants as young as 12-17 months (mean:14.8 months) successfully matched non-verbal vocalizations elicited by funny, exciting, adorable, sympathetic, and deliciousimages to their probable causes (Experiments 1 and 2). Do infants also posit unobserved causes of emotional expressions? Inboth exploratory and pre-registered experiments, an adult peeked into a box and made one of two distinct positive emotionalvocalizations (Experiment 3: “Aww!” or “Mmm!”; Experiment 4: “Aww!” or “Whoa!”). Infants reaching into the box retrievedeither a probable or improbable cause of the reaction. Infants were more likely to search again on incongruent trials. Theseresults suggest that infants make nuanced distinctions among emotions, and infer probable causes of emotional reactions.