Study title

This series of studies aims to examine the ways in which young infants (14 months old) use the emotional expressions of other people to help them learn about the world around them. More specifically, we are aiming to test a new theory which proposes that infants' interpretations of emotional expressions are guided by two different psychological systems. The first one is designed to help infants learn about relationships between people and interprets facial expressions (eg smiling, fear, disgust) as indicators of people's affilliation (or lack of it) with others (we refer to this system as the social-coalition system). The second one is designed to help infants rapidly learn a wide range of cultural information (gestures, words, symbols, practices) from knowledgeable adults (the 'pedagogy system'). In a series of four experiments, we aim to show that these two systems operate using fundamentally different mechanisms even under seemingly similar circumstances. By doing so, we hope to throw new light on some important processes in infants' early social and cultural learning.