Question

The novelty preference can be used to determine what babies can perceive about the world. Can babies recognise different emotions?

Answer 1

Yes, babies have the ability to identify various emotions in the world. They respond better to optimistic or positive emotions, and infants, even who are as young as four months old, can differentiate between the various emotions. Research has identified, through a game of peekaboo, that babies have reacted differently to anger, fear, or sadness. This difference in their reactions show that babies understand these emotions and hence they know or identify if the situation is happy or sad. Infants are observed to avoid the emotion of sadness and smile or giggle when they observe any happy emotion.