ABSTRACT
The study of infants can contribute vital evidence on the nature and function of human emotion. It can help resolve four classical problems which challenge all attempts to understand empathic communication between persons. First, accurate description of the expressive movements of infants can give evidence on the inherent motor coordinating mechanisms of affect and on the process of their development. Second, analysis, both descriptive and experimental, of the changes of affective expression of infants when they are communicating with adults can reveal the extent to which infants are sensitive to emotions of others and able to regulate their own affective states by eliciting supportive responses from others. This leads to analysis of the role of affective communication in the formation and maintenance of relationships between infants and persons with whom they have different degrees of familiarity. Third, developments in expressive behavior may be related to orienting and focusing on objects, interest for the displacements, appearances and disappearances of objects and abilities to grasp, manipulate and combine objects with recreation of experiences, all of which show large and systematic advances in infancy. This comparison between affective and cognitive development may resolve the problem of how the infant gains awareness of persons as entities separate from themselves. Do infants have to build a universal concept of self and object before they can be emotional about their relationships to persons? Or, are persons conceived by a different mechanism from that which masters manipulable objects? Finally, an accurate estimation of the use of emotional expressions in communication by infants of different ages can provide information on the role of language in the formation of emotions. If infants’ acts of emotional communication are comparatively well-differentiated and similar in form to those of adults, then the idea that emotions are first defined verbally, or by thoughts or reflections mediated verbally, must be rejected. A similar argument about how far the development of awareness of a social self by imitation of adults and by learning of an independent and consistent social role contributes to definition of emotional states may be resolved by observing how the expressions of affective states of mind develop in the first few months, before the child has significant social autonomy.
