A dynamic systems approach to infant facial action

ly defined feeling states arid the rest of experience has a heuristic function, it contradicts fundamental systems principles. The mutual influence between an emotional feeling and a particular cognition or perception creates a unique gestalt Pleasure in Duchenne smiling, the feeling of mutual positive involvement with a partner, and the sensation of tightened cheeks, all are inextricably combined. Each constituent transforms the experience of the other. The infant's experience of his or her embodied facial actions and his or her sensory experience of the partner are important constituents of the infant's emotional feeling (Fogel, 1993). Broadening our conception of emotional experience has a theoretical advantage in accounting for the development of positive affect. Vygotsky (1978) has proposed that conventional communication develops because infants' gestures are treated as though they were intentional by the infants' social partners. A similar process may occur in the development of smiling. Face-ta-face interaction is a social frame in which infants experience the influence of their facial actions on a partner. Mathers treat early infant zygomatic contraction as indices of pleasure. They smile back, comment, and try to elicit more smiles. Some of the feelings associated with zygomatic contraction such as an experience of engagement and mutuality may stem from such experiences. Part of the phenomenological experience of zygomatic contraction may develop from experiences of smiling while engaged with a smiling partner. It is tempting to argue that infants' feelings are an internal reaction, a subjective summary of the meaning of an infant's actions in an interactive process. The difficulty with this position is that infant feeling ultimately becomes epiphenomenal. Subjective feeling may be a reflection of an ongoing process, but it is also a part of that process. Clearly, feeling states are on a different level of analYSis than, say, cerebral activation. But constituents at different levels of analysis are rarely reducible to one another (Oyama, 1985). Like any other constituent of a process, infant feeling influences and is influenced by other constituents such as the I infant's facial actions, his or her propensity to react to the social partner, and his or her state of sympathetic nervous system activation. A recent debate concerns the temporal relationship of feeling to action. Izard (chapter 3, this volume) argues that emotional feelings are prior motivators of action. Campos et al. (1994) argue that emotional experience occurs just as a positive event is perceived. From a Dynamic Systems perspective, it seems unlikely that either possibility is exclusive. Positive feelings may motivate· social actions such as gazing at a partner just as positive feelings may arise in the act of gazing at the partner. The principle here is that unidirectional cause-effect relationships between system constituents are unlikely. Mutual influence between infant facial and other actions, subjective feeling, and the response of a partner over the actual time span of an emotional interaction is likely to be a more productive assumption. In this chapter, we have indicated how Dynamic Systems principles emphasizing the self-organization of complex systems can inform our understanding of facial action. We have identified how the mutual influence of neuromuscular, anatomical, neural, interactive, and affective processes can yield coordinated facial action. Finally, we applied the concept of mutual influence to problematics in emotion theory to achieve a more appropriately balanced understanding of these dynamic phenomena.