Whether a dog gives a friendly yap or an angry snarl, baby can tell how Fido is feeling.
A new study conducted by researchers at Brigham Young University found that infants — some just 6 months old — could match the sound of a happy bark with a photo of a dog that looked friendly. Conversely, the youngsters paired an angry growl with a photo of a threatening-looking dog.
Those results indicate that long before infants learn to talk, babies recognize and respond to the tone of what’s going on around them.
“Infants enter the world with a large capacity for recognizing emotion,” said psychology professor Ross Flom, lead author of the study published in the July issue of Developmental Psychology. “Infants many not understand what you say, but they know how you say it. They pick up on emotional cues, even in the first six months.”
The findings are just another piece of the brain development puzzle.
“Within the first two years of life we have more rapid changes in our development than at any time in our life. We learn to talk, walk, think and develop an awareness of other people,” Flom said. “We are trying to uncover how we master so much in a short amount of time.”
“Young infants have a remarkable ability to recognize affect (emotion) not only human faces and voices but in a wide variety of contexts,” Flom said.
Dogs were chosen for the experiment because they are highly communicative in both facial expression and bark, Flom said.
In the experiment, more than 125 children, ranging in age from 6 to 24 months, were shown two screen images of the same dog, one in an aggressive posture and the other in a friendly stance.
Researchers then played recorded sounds of a friendly bark and an aggressive growl. When the sounds were played, researchers tracked childrens’ eye movements between the photos.
While the recordings played, the 6-month-old babies spent most of their time staring at the appropriate picture, according to the researchers. Older babies usually made the connection with their first glance.
Alan Fogel, a professor of psychology at the University of Utah who wasn’t involved in the research, said the study fits nicely with previous studies that show babies are able to match up human faces and voices.
“It adds to our understanding of an infant’s ability to pick up emotion from other creatures, not just humans,” he said. “If it’s an angry dog, you want to avoid it. If it’s a happy dog, you want to approach it. We already have that perception skill by 6 months. Recognizing the emotions of other people and other species is highly relevant to our ability to survive in the world.”
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