Careful. Your toddler is eavesdropping on you.

Researchers from the University of Washington say 18-month-old infants engage in "emotional eavesdropping," meaning they listen and watch emotional reactions between two adults and use that information to manage their own behaviour.

They say the results of their research, which can be found in the March-April issue of the Child Development journal, are a first.

"There are lots of studies of how the emotions parents directly communicate to their infants have an impact on their behaviour," said researcher Betty Repacholi in a news release. "No one before considered if infants can take in emotional information when directed toward someone else and apply it to themselves."

The study shows just how intelligent children are at a very young age. Being able to interpret emotion is an important skill.

"This may be a precursor to 'reading' other people's minds by understanding their emotional and psychological states," said Repacholi. They also point out that toddlers will "use emotional eavesdropping to avoid some of the negative consequences that might arise were they to perform an action themselves."

To some, the study seems like common sense. "I don't really find this to be groundbreaking," says Alyson Schafer, a Toronto-based psychotherapist and author of Breaking the Good Mom Myth: Every Modern Mom's Guide to Getting Past Perfection, Regaining Sanity and Raising Great Kids (Wiley, 2006, $17.99). "A lot of times it takes research to put robustness behind something that we've already talked about."

Schafer says the findings are compatible with what experts -- and parents -- probably already know.

"Our brains are wired so that we do actually plug into each other's emotional states, which is why yawning is contagious," she says. "We know that kids are very keen to watch faces and people's emotions."

Calgary-based child psychologist Michael Boyes agrees. "I think they're overplaying the revolutionary character of the finding," he says, adding it just highlights children's abilities to read the facial expressions of primary caregivers as a way of deciding what's good, what's safe and what's not.

"What is interesting about this study is that kids will pick this up when watching how someone else behaves," says Boyes.

The bottom line is that toddlers pick up on emotional reactions by observing interactions that don't involve them. It's a good thing to keep in mind, says Schafer.

"Parents will be very conscious of being positive to the kids, but they'll turn around and yell at their spouses," she says. "Your kids are watching you. They're learning from that, learning about standards, and learning how to deal with mistakes. They are watching their parents to see how people do it."


Source: www.canada.com/vancouvers.../story.html