Observing Emotion in Infants: Facial Expression, Body Behavior, and Rater Judgments of Responses to an Expectancy-Violating Event

Eleven-month-old European-American, Japanese, and Chinese infants (ns 4 23,21, and 15, respectively) were videotaped during baseline and stimulus episodes ofa covert toy-switch procedure. Infants looked longer at the object during the expectancy-violating event (stimulus episode) but did not produce more surpriserelatedfacial expressions. American and Japanese infants produced more bodilystilling during stimulus than baseline, and American infants also produced morefacial sobering. Naive raters viewing both episodes could correctly identify theexpectancy-violating event. Rater judgments of surprise were significantly relatedto infants’ bodily stilling and facial sobering. Judgments of interest were related tocessation of fussing. Thus, observer judgments of infant emotions can be systematicallyrelated to behaviors other than prototypic emotional facial expressions