Five-Month-Old Babies Can Understand Each Others’ Emotions

Babies as young as 5 months can understand each others' emotions, a latest study reveals.

The study conducted by researchers at Brigham Young University observed reactions of 40 babies, aged between 3.5 months to 5 months. These babies were showed two different videos. One had a smiling baby and the other one showed a sad and crying baby. The researchers then played an audio of a third baby with both happy and sad emotions. When the babies heard the audio of the third baby crying they looked at the video of the sad baby and vice versa.

 "Newborns can't verbalize to their mom or dad that they are hungry or tired, so the first way they communicate is through affect or emotion," Ross Flom, lead researcher and psychology professor at Brigham Young University. "Thus it is not surprising that in early development, infants learn to discriminate changes in affect," he added.

The research was a follow-up of a previous study done by the same team. The study showed that  infants can understand the emotions of dogs, monkeys and respond to classical music. Another study showed that 6-months-old babies can understand emotional expressions of familiar adults and when they are 7-months-old they can understand the emotions of all the other adults.

Flom said that the findings will be helpful in the understanding of infant development. "Babies learn more in their first 2 1/2 years of life than they do the rest of their lifespan, making it critical to examine how and what young infants learn and how this helps them learn other things."