Emotion In Newborns

The purpose of this research study was to record newborns responses to speech both in their native and nonnative languages and see their responses to emotions. They were interested in testing the finding that had been found by previous researchers that infants do not have the capacity to perceive emotion until a few weeks after they are born. The researchers formulated the hypothesis that newborns differentiate between the emotional characteristics of speech and that this phenomenon is based partly on the newborns experience prenatally. They were focused on the prosodic aspects of speech, such as frequency, intensity and rhythm, over the newborns ability to detect phonemes. They were interested in building upon previous research on the factors …show more content…
The first group was the English  English group, this group consisted of infants whose mother’s native language was English and heard English vocal expressions of emotion during the study. The second group was the Spanish Spanish group, this group was comprised of infants whose mother’s native language was Spanish and who heard Spanish vocal expressions during the study. The Third group was the English Spanish group, this group of infants had native Spanish Speaking mothers and were exposed to English vocal expressions during this study. The fourth group was the Spanish  English group, this group of infants had English native speaking mothers and were exposed to Spanish vocal expressions during this research. The mothers were recorded saying different phrases with emotions and were encouraged to recall a memory that characterized the emotion they were trying to portray so that it would sound more natural instead of like they were acting. These recording were processed through editing software to make sure they were as similar as possible sound-wise. This was a Cross-Sectional study as the researchers were comparing the participants to each other, and only studied the group at one time and did not follow them over a period of time. The behaviors that the researchers were interested in were eye behavior and mouthing. The researchers videotaped the babies and they were assessed based on how active they were, movements of their eyes, limbs, and head, crying, and