Discrimination of dynamic facial expressions in newborns

The ability to discriminate between different facial expressions is fundamental to understand the internal states of others and, thus, it plays a key role in social interactions. Recent evidence has shown that this ability develops very early in human life. In fact, at birth newborns appear to be able to differentiate between static faces depicting fearful and happyexpressions (Farroni et al., 2007). To date no study has investigated newborns’ ability to discriminate dynamic facial expressions. Several studies indicate that the emotional processing of facial expressions is facilitated when adults witness dynamic stimuli rather than static (e.g., Sato et al., 2004). The aim of this study is to investigate whether 2-days-old newborns are able to discriminate between a happy and a disgusted dynamic facial expression using a visual preference (Experiment 1) and a habituation task (Experiment 2). In Experiment 1 newborns didn’t show any preference when presented simultaneously with happy and disgusted expressions. In Experiment 2 newborns were habituated with one of the two expressions and then tested with a preference test in which both facial expressions were simultaneously displayed. Results have shown that during the test phase newborns looked longer to the novel than to the familiar stimulus, demonstrating to discriminate between the two expressions. These results, though the collection of data is still in progress, demonstrate that from the first stages of postnatal life newborns are sensitive to the emotional content conveyed by dynamic facial expressions