Your Baby’s Earliest Feelings

The Foundation of Feelings: The Nine Basic Signals

“Darwin proposed that there are certain innate discrete emotions that manifest themselves via distinct patterns of facial expression and postural muscle activity … From Darwin’s point of view, emotions are basically adaptive and help to organize behavior in ways that increase the chances of survival … There is evidence that the basic innate emotions are present in the neonate and are fundamentally the same in infants across cultures.” – Taylor, Bagby, and Parker, Disorders of Affect Regulation (pp. 8, 15).

Hallie is very expressive. Since she was three months old, whenever she’s hungry she makes a little fake coughing sound, “Huh, huh,” and then stares at me with a big open mouth. That’s pretty expressive. And if she falls asleep between us and then wakes up and is hungry again, she kicks me to wake me up so I’ll feed her. Now she’s six months old, and for the past couple of weeks, she’s been touching my breast when she wants some milk. If she’s upset, she scrunches her face and wails! This girl has powerful lungs. She’s so much more interactive with me that I expected. She really seems to be able to tell me what she is feeling and needing.”
–Sheri A-J., 36, first-time mom

Exciting recent research suggests something remarkable: Your baby arrives in this world with the ability to express feelings and reactions using a preverbal language of nine innate signals. These signals are expressed through a combination of facial expressions, sounds and body language. They communicate an infant’s responses to all kinds of stimuli, both internal—like a painful gas bubble, and external—like a funny noise or an angry voice. And they have been found in babies and adults of every culture studied so far.

From day one, these signals are the child’s language of need and want. And they are the basic foundation of an infant’s complex emotional character. They turn into feelings!

The nine signals can be grouped into two categories: Signals of Fun, which include Interest, Enjoyment and Surprise; and Signals for Help, which include Distress, Anger, Fear, Shame, Disgust—an aversion to unpleasant tastes—and Dissmell—an aversion to unpleasant odors.

Interest and enjoyment are positive signals; surprise resets the nervous system in response to rapidly-occurring stimulation; and distress, anger, fear, shame, disgust, and dissmell are negative signals. The fact that there are more negative than positive signals appears to be an evolutionary phenomenon: it is more important for the child’s survival to be able to signal when it is in trouble than when it is not. (See Part Two of the book for more details on the individual signals.)

Deciphering the signals’ meanings
I remember when my son was born. Sometimes I felt that I was doing a good job of understanding his moods and expressions, but sometimes it was harder to know exactly what he was trying to tell us. As he got older, at times things seemed even more confusing and complex. But as I began learning more about these nine signals and the emotions, which develop from them, things seemed to fall into place
You may experience much the same thing. When you bring your baby home from the hospital, you may learn, rather easily, that she’s tired or hungry when she furrows her brow, let’s out a plaintive cry, or frowns at you, with her mouth turned down. You’ll see that enjoyment is expressed with a smile and a twinkle in the eye. But as your child grows, her feelings become more complicated—“I’m hungry” and “I’m tired” are no longer the two main messages. She’ll begin to use signals to express everything from curiosity to disappointment, anger to love. And those may seem more difficult to decipher.
Well, luckily, there is some solid research on how signals are expressed and what they mean. To help parents translate the infant’s signals, scientists using high-speed film, scans of the brain and so on, have identified specific gestures, expressions and sounds that are associated with each signal. Computerized studies of infants document they will look at a human face above any other stimulus; and, on the face, their first choice is to focus around the area of the eyes, and, second, around the mouth. The face consists of over 25 different muscles and is the main arena for these signals. Infants are programmed to look for these facial expressions. Lively scientific controversy still exists over the exact number and nature of these built in signals, and for the purposes of this book the focus will be on the following nine.

Researchers have found that:
• Interest is shown with the eyebrows slightly lowered or raised, concentrated looking and listening, and the mouth may be a little open.
• Enjoyment elicits a smile, with the lips widened up and out.
• Surprise is associated with eyebrows up, eyes wide open and blinking and the mouth in an “O” shape.
• Distress is revealed by crying, arched eyebrows, the corners of the mouth turned down, tears and rhythmic sobbing.
• Anger is shown by a frown, eyes narrowed, a clenched jaw and a red face.
• Fear is signaled by the eyes frozen open, skin pale, cold and sweating, facial trembling and hair erect.
• Shame is revealed by the lowering of the eyelids, loss of muscle tone in the face and neck causing the head to hang down.
• Disgust elicits protruding lip and tongue.
• Dissmell causes the upper lip and nose to be raised and the head to be turned away.

Furthermore, each one of these signals operates on a continuum from low-to-high: interest-to-excitement; enjoyment-to-joy; surprise-to-startle; distress-to-anguish; anger-to-rage; fear-to-terror; and shame-to-humiliation. By watching your own child day in and day out, you will see how they can escalate. For example, the signal for distress may mean “I’m tired and hungry.” But, simple hunger, expressed relatively mildly, may turn into anguish, if you don’t understand and respond promptly.

Not only do unattended signals often intensify, sometimes they change into other signals. For example: If interest and enjoyment are belittled or dismissed out of hand, they may trigger increasing feelings of shame. (“There must be something wrong with me if I’m enjoying what mom says is bad.”) If distress intensifies, it can turn into anger.

Neurological studies have shown that a child expresses one signal rather than another because different stimuli—such as hunger, a pretty balloon or a loud noise—produce different densities of neural firing in the brain. For example, any stimulus with a relatively sudden onset will cause a steep increase in the rate of neural firing and automatically activate a surprise-to-startle response; if the stimulation does not have so sudden an onset and causes the rate of neural firing to increase less rapidly, then fear is activated; and if the onset of the stimuli is still less rapid, then interest is elicited. In contrast, any stimulus that causes a sustained increase in the level of neural firing, such as a continuing loud noise, automatically activates a cry of distress; if the noise is sustained and even louder, it activates the anger responses; and, conversely, any sudden decrease in stimulation would innately activate the smile of enjoyment (Appendix Figures 1-3 illustrate these patterns).

The affects of shame, disgust and dissmell operate a bit differently. Babies may tend to express shame somewhat later than the other signals. Shame involves the absence of a confirming, validating response. Shame operates only after the signals of interest and/or enjoyment have been activated—and it acts to interfere with one or the other or both. In addition, shame, shyness, guilt, and discouragement may have an identical core, although the child doesn’t experience them as the same emotion because of perceived causes and consequences. Shame is about inferiority; shyness is about strangeness of the other; guilt is about moral transgression; and discouragement is about temporary defeat. Shame also appears intimately related to self-esteem. Many child development researchers suggest that the development of a healthy sense of self and self-esteem involves validation of the positive affects of interest and enjoyment and a growing sense of competency. Because the inappropriate and excessive use of shame hampers the signals for interest and enjoyment, shame erodes self-esteem.

Disgust and dissmell are considered to be innate defensive responses designed to protect a child from noxious and dangerous foods and odors. Disgust is related to taste and the gastrointestinal system; nausea and vomiting can help rid the body of dangerous substances. Dissmell involves the olfactory system, with the typical evasive maneuvers visible in infancy. The early warning response via the nose is dissmell; the next level of response, from the mouth or stomach, is disgust. Later, these signals are related psychologically to rejection and contempt. Such phrases as “this leaves a bad taste in my mouth” or “this has a bad smell to it” conveys the link between the physiological affects of disgust/dissmell and psychological rejection and contempt.
It is also important to note that these nine signals don’t operate in a vacuum. They can trigger other signals and may interact with one another. For example, excessive distress, fear or shame may trigger anger; and interruption of interest may lead to distress and then anger.

This article is an excerpt from What Babies Say Before They Can Talk.