An ongoing debate in affective science concerns whether certain discrete, “basic” emotions have evolutionarily based signals (facial expressions) that are easily, universally, and (perhaps) innately identified. Studies with preverbal infants (younger than 24 months) have the potential to shed light on this debate. This review summarizes what is known about preverbal infants’ understanding of discrete emotional facial expressions. Overall, while many studies suggest that preverbal infants differentiate positive and negative facial expressions, few studies have tested whether infants understand discrete emotions (e.g., anger vs. disgust). Moreover, results vary greatly based on methodological factors. This review also (a) discusses how language may influence the development of emotion understanding, and (b) proposes a new developmental hypothesis for infants’ discrete emotion understanding.

中文翻译：

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谚语婴儿能理解情绪的离散面部表情吗？

情感科学方面正在进行的辩论涉及某些离散的“基本”情感是否具有基于进化的信号（面部表情），这些信号容易，普遍且（可能）固有地被识别。对前期婴儿（小于24个月）的研究有可能阐明这一争论。这篇综述总结了关于谚语婴儿对离散情感面部表情的理解的知识。总体而言，尽管许多研究表明，谚语婴儿可以区分正面和负面的面部表情，但很少有研究测试婴儿是否能理解离散的情绪（例如，愤怒与厌恶）。此外，根据方法论因素，结果差异很大。这篇评论（a）还讨论了语言如何影响情感理解的发展，