I found Hamlin, Wynn, and Bloom’s article on social evaluation by preverbal infants to be very interesting, although it did stimulate quite a bit of doubt within me. I was particularly intrigued by the idea that “the capacity to evaluate individuals by their social actions may also serve as a foundation for a developing system of moral cognition.” At first I was a bit confused as to why the results of this study indicated the beginning of a moral system, for they seemed to reflect more punishment than morals. But I realized that the fact that the child reaches for the “helper’ or “neutral” party rather than the “harmful” party indicates some sort of approval of helping over inhibiting the third party, deeming one set of actions appropriate and the opposing set inappropriate. Another interesting part of this study was the conflicting data of the reaching and staring studies involving a neutral party; while infants reached for a neutral party over the hinder but for the helper over the neural party, this pattern was not reflected.
I did wonder, though, about the validity of the results and conclusions of this study because of both the methods and the population. I was surprised that wooden blocks with large eyes glued on were selected as the “characters” in this experiment. Because the face itself is so unique and a great deal of social information is conveyed through the eyes, it seems as if a more accurate representation would be necessary to truly evaluate an infant’s moral development. It seems unlikely that wooden blocks with eyes glued on would be able to adequately represent this. I am curious to see what would result if the study used blocks without eyes glued on, or blocks with images of actual faces glued on, although I do understand that using real faces would present a problem as well since “infants in the first half-year of life exhibit preferences for social individuals based on static perceptual features (for example, facial attractiveness, race).” The reaching behavior of the infant could possibly be influenced by the perceptual features of the face.
After reading this article, I read the chapters from The Handbook of Emotions and found the section on the development of emotional experiences in the chapter written by Lewis to be interesting. He writes, “Emotional experiences occur through the interpretation and evaluation of states, expressions, situations, behaviors of others, and beliefs about what ought to be happening. Emotional experiences are therefore dependent on cognitive processes.” He writes a bit later, after discussing infants inability to discriminate between facial patterns and have simultaneous comparisons, “This would suggest that infants are not capable of experiencing emotions prior to this point. Perhaps if I had read this article prior to Hamlin, Wynn, and Bloom’s article I would have agreed more with this point, but I did not. The article on social evaluation by preverbal infants provided very compelling evidence that evaluate the states, behaviors, and actions of others (they recognized that the third party was being helped or hindered and expressed either approval or disapproval of this) and have beliefs about what ought to be happening (they were surprised when the third party moved towards the hinderer). Although not every single one of the cognitive components Lewis has deemed “necessary” for experiencing an emotion are present, it seems as if it could be possible for infants to experience emotions. While I do agree with the fact that some emotions likely emerge before others, such as fear before shame since shame involves a more complex thought process (social norms, sense of self, disappointment), the emotional experience of infants should not be denied. The example of the woman who did not experience the state of fear she was in as her car slid off the road seems to reflect an attention issues; she was so preoccupied with handling the car she was not aware of the changes in her bodily state. Because infants can focus their attention, though, I do not think it is out of the question for an infant to “be in a state of pain or a state of fear, yet not experience that state.” Being very interested in the biological component of emotions, I wonder if Lewis’s ideas could be tested using some sort of brain imaging task.
1 comment:
I appreciated the Hamlin, Wynn, and Bloom article precisely because it helped me to justify my objection to Lewis' claims that infants under the age of 7/8 months cannot experience emotions. While I would agree with his statement that "an individual can be in a particular emotional state and not yet experience it," I would not venture to generalize this to all infants at all times! I babysit for a 6 month old, and spending as much time with him as I do, I have a really hard time believing that he isn't aware of the emotions that he is expressing as he is expressing them. Although I might not attribute much control to infants in terms of their emotional responses (they do not bottle up, deny, or otherwise defend against their emotions in the same ways that adults do, but rather express every emotional reaction they are having as they are having it), I find it difficult to understand how they could be having such intense bodily manifestations of emotion (I'm thinking particularly of distress/crying here) without having some awareness of what they are going through. Obviously language plays a role in all this - infants wouldn't think in the form of the words "I feel sad right now" - but how are we to know that there isn't some form of pre-verbal awareness of an emotional state taking place for them?
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