Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

The ability to recognize facial expressions of emotion in social partners is important for successful social interactions.It is unknown how accurately and rapidly the infant brain discriminates between emotions with different valences (e.g., happyvs. fearful) and between emotions with similar valences (e.g., fearful vs. angry). The current study uses a novel approach—FastPeriodic Visual Stimulation (FPVS)—to evaluate emotion discrimination in infancy. FPVS is an electrophysiological techniquethat relies on rapid presentation of stimuli to create corresponding oscillations in the brain that can be measured at the scalpsurface. Preliminary results (n = 6) indicate that infants are indeed sensitive to the visual stimulation: EEG power, averagedover occipital and occipitotemporal areas, was 11.55 times larger at 6Hz compared to surrounding frequencies. This study aimsto shed light on a longstanding theoretical debate of whether emotion recognition is innate or learned through experience.