Infant Perception of Emotions from Music: Evidence from Violation-of-Expectation Paradigm

doi:10.12139/j.1672-0628.2024.04.009

Abstract

Abstract:

The capacity of infants to perceive emotions in music has been debated. Previous studies often mixed music emotion perception with acoustic processing. To address this, the violation-of-expectation (VoE) paradigm was employed to investigate whether infants aged 10~20 months form emotional expectations about facial expressions after listening to music. Infants were presented with either happy or sad music, followed by adult facial expressions that were either consistent or inconsistent with the emotion of the music. Eye-tracking technology was used to measure infants’ looking time and pupil response to the facial expressions. The results revealed that infants looked significantly longer at facial expressions inconsistent with the emotion of music, which indicates a violation of their expectations. Furthermore, greater pupil dilation was observed when facial expressions were consistent with the emotion of music, which suggests that music and facial expressions may evoke similar emotional responses in infants. These findings indicate that infants as young as 10~20 months can distinguish between happy and sad emotions in music and form emotional expectations that guide their subsequent processing of facial expressions.

Key words: infant, music emotion, violation-of-expectation, eye-tracking

摘要：

婴儿能否感知到音乐的情绪？以往研究混淆了婴儿对音乐声学特征和情绪特征的加工。本研究采用预期违背范式，观察了10～20个月婴儿听音乐(听觉)后是否形成对表情(视觉)的情绪预期。研究者给婴儿播放快乐或悲伤的音乐后，呈现与音乐情绪一致或不一致的成人表情图片，使用眼动仪记录婴儿对表情图片的注视时长和瞳孔反应。结果发现，在表情与音乐情绪不一致的条件下，婴儿的注视时长更长，可能说明不一致的情况违背了婴儿的预期；在表情与音乐情绪一致的条件下，婴儿的瞳孔扩张程度更大，可能表明音乐和表情能够唤起婴儿相似的情感反应。结果表明，10～20个月的婴儿已经能够感知快乐和悲伤的音乐情绪，并形成情绪预期，用于后续的表情加工。

关键词: 婴儿, 音乐情绪, 预期违背, 眼动

Chenyu YAN, Qinmei XU, Tao LIU, Mengting CHENG, Sa MA, Yuqing GE. Infant Perception of Emotions from Music: Evidence from Violation-of-Expectation Paradigm[J]. Studies of Psychology and Behavior, 2024, 22(4): 494-500.

严晨毓, 徐琴美, 刘涛, 成梦婷, 马洒, 葛雨箐. 婴儿能否感知音乐情绪？来自预期违背范式的证据[J]. 心理与行为研究, 2024, 22(4): 494-500.

Figures/Tables 5

References 0

	龚栩, 黄宇霞, 王妍, 罗跃嘉. 中国面孔表情图片系统的修订. 中国心理卫生杂志, 2011, 25 (1): 40- 46. DOI
	马谐, 陶云, 白学军. 儿童对中-西方音乐情绪感知的发展研究. 心理与行为研究, 2017, 15 (2): 233- 239. DOI
	孟昭兰. (2005). 情绪心理学. 北京: 北京大学出版社.
	徐琴美, 何洁. 儿童情绪理解发展的研究述评. 心理科学进展, 2006, 14 (2): 223- 228. DOI
	周玉, 张丹丹. 婴儿情绪与社会认知相关的听觉加工. 心理科学进展, 2017, 25 (1): 67- 75.
	Beatty, J., & Lucero-Wagoner, B. (2000). The pupillary system. In J. T. Cacioppo, L. G. Tassinary, & G. G. Berntson (Eds.), Handbook of psychophysiology (2nd ed., pp. 142–162). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
	Bergeson, T. R., & Trehub, S. E. Signature tunes in mothers’ speech to infants. Infant Behavior and Development, 2007, 30 (4): 648- 654. DOI
	Brady, S. M., Ogren, M., & Johnson, S. P. Effects of conflicting emotional cues on toddlers’ emotion perception. British Journal of Developmental Psychology, 2024, 43 (3): 376- 391.
	Caron, A. J., Caron, R. F., & MacLean, D. J. Infant discrimination of naturalistic emotional expressions: The role of face and voice. Child Development, 1988, 59 (3): 604- 616. DOI
	Cohen, J. A power primer. Psychological Bulletin, 1992, 112 (1): 155- 159. DOI
	Deutsch, D. (2013). The psychology of music (3rd ed.). Amsterdam: Elsevier Academic Press.
	Eerola, T., & Vuoskoski, J. K. A comparison of the discrete and dimensional models of emotion in music. Psychology of Music, 2011, 39 (1): 18- 49. DOI
	Fawcett, C., & Kreutz, G. Twelve-month-old infants’ physiological responses to music are affected by others’ positive and negative reactions. Infancy, 2021, 26 (6): 784- 797. DOI
	Flom, R., Gentile, D. A., & Pick, A. D. Infants’ discrimination of happy and sad music. Infant Behavior and Development, 2008, 31 (4): 716- 728. DOI
	Flom, R., & Pick, A. D. Dynamics of infant habituation: Infants’ discrimination of musical excerpts. Infant Behavior and Development, 2012, 35 (4): 697- 704. DOI
	Geangu, E., Hauf, P., Bhardwaj, R., & Bentz, W. Infant pupil diameter changes in response to others’ positive and negative emotions. PLoS One, 2011, 6 (11): e27132. DOI
	Juslin, P. N. From everyday emotions to aesthetic emotions: Towards a unified theory of musical emotions. Physics of Life Reviews, 2013, 10 (3): 235- 266. DOI
	Kisilevsky, B. S., Hains, S. M. J., Jacquet, A. Y., Granier-Deferre, C., & Lecanuet, J. P. Maturation of fetal responses to music. Developmental Science, 2004, 7 (5): 550- 559. DOI
	Luo, Y. Y. Three-month-old infants attribute goals to a non-human agent. Developmental Science, 2011, 14 (2): 453- 460. DOI
	Moog, H. (1976). The musical experience of the pre-school child. London: Schott.
	Nagy, E., Cosgrove, R., Robertson, N., Einhoff, T., & Orvos, H. Neonatal musicality: Do newborns detect emotions in music. Psychological Studies, 2022, 67 (4): 501- 513. DOI
	Nakata, T., & Trehub, S. E. Infants’ responsiveness to maternal speech and singing. Infant Behavior and Development, 2004, 27 (4): 455- 464. DOI
	Nawrot, E. S. The perception of emotional expression in music: Evidence from infants, children and adults. Psychology of Music, 2003, 31 (1): 75- 92. DOI
	Ogren, M., & Johnson, S. P. Intermodal emotion matching at 15 months, but not 9 or 21 months, predicts early childhood emotion understanding: A longitudinal investigation. Cognition and Emotion, 2020, 34 (7): 1343- 1356. DOI
	Perani, D., Saccuman, M. C., Scifo, P., Spada, D., Andreolli, G., Rovelli, R., ... Koelsch, S. Functional specializations for music processing in the human newborn brain. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2010, 107 (10): 4758- 4763.
	Plate, R. C., Jones, C., Steinberg, J., Daley, G., Corbett, N., & Waller, R. Children’s knowledge and feelings align in response to emotional music. Developmental Psychology, 2024, 60 (2): 265- 270. DOI
	Porter, G., Troscianko, T., & Gilchrist, I. D. Effort during visual search and counting: Insights from pupillometry. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 2007, 60 (2): 211- 229. DOI
	Reschke, P. J., Walle, E. A., Flom, R., & Guenther, D. Twelve-month-old infants’ sensitivity to others’ emotions following positive and negative events. Infancy, 2017, 22 (6): 874- 881. DOI
	Ruba, A. L., Meltzoff, A. N., & Repacholi, B. M. How do you feel? Preverbal infants match negative emotions to events. Developmental Psychology, 2019, 55 (6): 1138- 1149. DOI
	Ruba, A. L., Meltzoff, A. N., & Repacholi, B. M. The development of negative event-emotion matching in infancy: Implications for theories in affective science. Affective Science, 2020, 1 (1): 4- 19. DOI
	Ruba, A. L., & Pollak, S. D. The development of emotion reasoning in infancy and early childhood. Annual Review of Developmental Psychology, 2020, 2, 503- 531. DOI
	Sauter, D. A., Panattoni, C., & Happé, F. Children’s recognition of emotions from vocal cues. British Journal of Developmental Psychology, 2013, 31 (1): 97- 113. DOI
	Silk, J. S., Dahl, R. E., Ryan, N. D., Forbes, E. E., Axelson, D. A., Birmaher, B., & Siegle, G. J. Pupillary reactivity to emotional information in child and adolescent depression: Links to clinical and ecological measures. American Journal of Psychiatry, 2007, 164 (12): 1873- 1880. DOI
	Siu, T. S. C., & Cheung, H. Infants’ sensitivity to emotion in music and emotion-action understanding. PLoS One, 2017, 12 (2): e0171023. DOI
	Smith-Flores, A. S., Flores -Guevara, I. A., & Powell, L. J. Infants expect friends, but not rivals, to be happy for each other when they succeed. Developmental Science, 2024, 27 (1): e13423. DOI
	Squires, J., & Bricker, D. (2009). Ages & stages questionnaires^® (3th ed., pp. 257–182). Baltimore, MD: Paul H. Brookes Publishing Co.
	Swaminathan, S., & Schellenberg, E. G. Current emotion research in music psychology. Emotion Review, 2015, 7 (2): 189- 197. DOI
	Trehub, S. E. The developmental origins of musicality. Nature Neuroscience, 2003, 6 (7): 669- 673. DOI
	Vaillant-Molina, M., Bahrick, L. E., & Flom, R. Young infants match facial and vocal emotional expressions of other infants. Infancy, 2013, 18 (S1): E97- E111.
	Valentine, C. W. (1962). The experimental psychology of beauty. London: Routledge.
	Walker-Andrews, A. S., & Grolnick, W. Discrimination of vocal expressions by young infants. Infant Behavior and Development, 1983, 6 (4): 491- 498. DOI
	Zekveld, A. A., Koelewijn, T., & Kramer, S. E. (2018). The pupil dilation response to auditory stimuli: Current state of knowledge. Trends in Hearing, 22, 2331216518777174.
	Zentner, M., & Eerola, T. Rhythmic engagement with music in infancy. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2010, 107 (13): 5768- 5773.

序号	专辑名称	曲目	快乐程度评分	悲伤程度评分
1	Shallow Grave	6	7.33	1.00
3	The Rainmaker	3	7.17	1.00
6	The Rainmaker	5	7.00	1.00
36	Running Scared	15	1.17	7.00
32	The English Patient	18	1.17	7.50
31	The Four Feathers	10	1.00	7.67

序号	专辑名称	曲目	快乐程度评分	悲伤程度评分
1	Shallow Grave	6	7.33	1.00
3	The Rainmaker	3	7.17	1.00
6	The Rainmaker	5	7.00	1.00
36	Running Scared	15	1.17	7.00
32	The English Patient	18	1.17	7.50
31	The Four Feathers	10	1.00	7.67

图片编号	性别	类型	认同度	强度
HF61	女	愉快	100.00	7.30
HF8	女	愉快	100.00	7.01
HF15	女	愉快	100.00	6.92
SAF16	女	悲伤	97.98	6.79
SAF36	女	悲伤	97.98	5.88
SAF15	女	悲伤	96.97	5.75

图片编号	性别	类型	认同度	强度
HF61	女	愉快	100.00	7.30
HF8	女	愉快	100.00	7.01
HF15	女	愉快	100.00	6.92
SAF16	女	悲伤	97.98	6.79
SAF36	女	悲伤	97.98	5.88
SAF15	女	悲伤	96.97	5.75

[1]	Huihua HE, Yingxin CHEN, Qin JIANG, Lu JIANG. Effects of Paternal Marital Satisfaction on 1~3 Years Old Children’s Social-Emotional Competence: A Chain Mediating Model of Father-Child Attachment and Father Involvement [J]. Studies of Psychology and Behavior, 2022, 20(6): 790-796.
[2]	HOU Juan, LIU Jinqun, CHEN Xin, HUANG Jiani, FANG Xiao-yi. Eye Movements in Viewing Love-related and Sex-related Stimuli: Effects of Sexual Attitude and Passionate Love [J]. Studies of Psychology and Behavior, 2019, 17(3): 384-394.
[3]	Ma Xie, Tao Yun, Bai Xuejun. Development on the Perception of Chinese and Western Music Emotion in Children [J]. Studies of Psychology and Behavior, 2017, 15(2): 233-239.
[4]	Wang Fuxing, Tong Yu, Qian Yingying, Xie Heping. Eye Tracking in Infancy and Preschooler Research: Procedure, Method and Data Analysis [J]. Studies of Psychology and Behavior, 2016, 14(4): 558-567.
[5]	Yu Yue, Jiang Yuan, Fang Ping, He Qiong, Zhang Kun. Measurement for Music-induced Emotions and Its Interacting Factors [J]. Studies of Psychology and Behavior, 2014, 12(5): 695-700.
[6]	He Huizhong, Sun Binbin. Eye Movements During Processing of Discourse Requiring Bridging Inferences in Deaf Readers with Skilled and Less Skilled [J]. Studies of Psychology and Behavior, 2014, 12(4): 447-453.