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Recent research has indicated that language provides an important contribution to adults’ conceptions of emotional expressions and their associated categories, but how language influences children’s expression category acquisition has yet to be explored. Across two studies, we provide evidence that when preschoolers (2–4 years) encounter a novel label, they use a process of elimination to match it with its expected expression. Children successfully used a process of elimination to match a single expression to one of several labels (Study 1) and to match a single label to one of several expressions (Study 2). These data highlight one possible mechanism that children may use to learn about the expressions they encounter and may shed light on the ways in which children’s expression categories are constructed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a classic study, children were shown an array of facial expressions and asked to choose the person who expressed a specific emotion. Children were later asked to name the emotion in the face with any label they wanted. Subsequent research often relied on the same two tasks—choice from array and free labeling—to support the conclusion that children recognize basic emotions from facial expressions. Here five studies ( N = 120, 2- to 10-year-olds) showed that these two tasks produce illusory recognition ; a novel nonsense facial expression was included in the array. Children “recognized” a nonsense emotion ( pax or tolen ) and two familiar emotions (fear and jealousy) from the same nonsense face. Children likely used a process of elimination; they paired the unknown facial expression with a label given in the choice-from-array task and, after just two trials, freely labeled the new facial expression with the new label. These data indicate that past studies using this method may have overestimated children’s expression knowledge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The authors tested the ability of capuchin monkeys (Cebus apelIa) to make inferences about hidden food. In Experiment 1, we showed the content of 2 boxes, 1 of which was baited (visual condition, VC) or we shook both boxes producing noise from the baited box (auditory condition, AC). Seven subjects (out of 8) were above chance in the VC, whereas only I was above chance in AC. During treatment, by manipulating empty and filled objects subjects experienced the relation between noise and content. When tested again, 7 capuchins were above chance in the VC and 3 in AC. In Experiment 2, we gave visual or auditory information only about the empty box and, consequently, successful choice implied inferential reasoning. All subjects (out of 4) were above chance in the VC, and 2 in the AC. Control tests ruled out the possibility that success resulted from simply avoiding the shaken noiseless box, or from the use of arbitrary auditory information. Similar to apes (Call, 2004), capuchins were capable of inferential reasoning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]