Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2009 Jan;32(1):33-43.
doi: 10.1016/j.infbeh.2008.09.007. Epub 2008 Oct 31.

Anticipatory smiling: linking early affective communication and social outcome

Meaghan Venezia Parlade  1 , Daniel S Messinger, Christine E F Delgado, Marygrace Yale Kaiser, Amy Vaughan Van Hecke, Peter C Mundy
Affiliations

Anticipatory smiling: linking early affective communication and social outcome

Meaghan Venezia Parlade et al. Infant Behav Dev. 2009 Jan.

Abstract

In anticipatory smiles, infants appear to communicate pre-existing positive affect by smiling at an object and then turning the smile toward an adult. We report two studies in which the precursors, development, and consequences of anticipatory smiling were investigated. Study 1 revealed a positive correlation between infant smiling at 6 months and the level of anticipatory smiling at 8 and 10 months during joint attention episodes, as well as a positive correlation between anticipatory smiling and parent-rated social expressivity scores at 30 months. Study 2 confirmed a developmental increase in the number of infants using anticipatory smiles between 9 and 12 months that had been initially documented in the Study 1 sample [Venezia, M., Messinger, D. S., Thorp, D., & Mundy, P. (2004). The development of anticipatory smiling. Infancy, 6(3), 397-406]. Additionally, anticipatory smiling at 9 months positively predicted parent-rated social competence scores at 30 months. Findings are discussed with regard to the importance of anticipatory smiling in early socioemotional development.

PubMed Disclaimer

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Example of an anticipatory smile. A 15-month-old infant looks at an active object (left), smiles at the object (middle), and makes eye contact with the experimenter while continuing to smile (right).
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. Adamson LB, Bakeman R. Affect and attention: Infants observed with mothers and peers. Child Development. 1985;56:582–593.
    1. Adamson LB, Frick JE. The still-face: A history of a shared experimental paradigm. Infancy. 2003;4(4):451–473.
    1. Adamson LB, Russell CL. Emotion regulation and the emergence of joint attention. In: Rochat P, editor. Early social cognition: Understanding others in the first months of life. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Publishers; 1999. pp. 281–296.
    1. Bakeman R, Adamson L. Coordinating attention to people and objects in mother infant and peer-infant interactions. Child Development. 1984;55:1278–1298. - PubMed
    1. Bates E. Language and context: The acquisition of performatives. New York, NY: Academic Press; 1976.

Publication types