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Do infants show distinct negative facial expressions for different negative emotions? To address this question, European American, Chinese, and Japanese 11-month-olds were videotaped during procedures designed to elicit mild anger or frustration and fear. Facial behavior was coded using Baby FACS, an anatomically based scoring system. Infants' nonfacial behavior differed across procedures, suggesting that the target emotions were successfully elicited. However evidence for distinct emotion-specific facial configurations corresponding to fear versus anger was not obtained. Although facial responses were largely similar across cultures, some differences also were observed. Results are discussed in terms of functionalist and dynamical systems approaches to emotion and emotional expression. (Contains 3 tables and 2 figures.)

This paper presents a unitary approach to emotion and emotion regulation, building on the excellent points in the lead article by Cole, Martin, and Dennis (this issue), as well as the fine commentaries that follow it. It begins by stressing how, in the real world, the processes underlying emotion and emotion regulation appear to be largely one and the same, rendering the value of the distinction largely for the benefit of analysis. There is an extensive discussion of how the same processes can generate emotions (i.e., are constitutive of emotion) and account for variability of manifestation of emotion in context (i.e., regulate them). Following an extensive review of many of the principles involved in emotion and emotion regulation, the paper presents implications for developmental study of infants and children, includes several methodological recommendations, and concludes with an analysis of the extent to which contemporary affective neuroscience contributes to the study of emotion and emotion regulation.

A cross-national study examined what Japanese, Chinese, and American infants communicated to naive observers in various contexts when facial information was not available. Found that cultural differences were manifested primarily in deviations from expected responses to situations; Chinese and Japanese were not rated as more surprised in the "surprise situation" than in the "fear situation," whereas American babies were. (Author)

Measured 5- and 12-month-old Japanese and U.S. infants' responses to an arm restraint procedure. Found that older infants exhibited shorter response latencies and produced more negative facial expressions than did younger infants. Among five month olds, U.S. infants produced negative facial expressions more quickly than did Japanese infants. (BC)

Presents a study which used the coding system, BabyFACS, to identify emotional facial expressions in Chinese, European American and Japanese infants. Comparison of the infants; Similarities and differences in the expressions; Method used to conduct the study; Results of the study.