Do Babies Have Emotions in the Womb? What The Research Says.

Can a fetus taste and smell in the womb? A study led by Durham University’s Fetal and Neonatal Research Lab and published in the journal Psychological Science provides the first direct evidence that babies react to taste and smell in the womb. The researchers took 4D ultrasound scans of 100 pregnant women to see how…

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Adults Don’t Get Better at Recognizing Masked Faces

When you recognize a friend’s face, how do you know? Do you make a careful study of their nose and cheekbones? Are you thrown off if they don’t wear the usual expression? The vast majority of people probably scoffed at those questions. Facial recognition usually isn’t a matter of careful study, but instead it is…

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Are Cats Sensitive to Human Emotions?

Historically cats have received less research attention than their canine counterparts and their cognitive abilities were less recognized. However, in the last 10 years, research focusing on trying to better understand our feline companions has grown. Can cats read emotions? A recent 2020 study entitled “Emotion Recognition in Cats” published in the journal Animals demonstrated…

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Mental Health and Deception Detection

Are we confusing cues of low credibility with atypical behavior of people with mental health issues? Re-published with permission from Evidentia University. Friends of the Nonverbal Communication Blog, this week we present the paper “Atypical behaviors found in some mental health conditions negatively affect judgements of deception and credibility” by Lim, A.; Young, R. L.…

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