A new study has found that infants as young as five months can discern social relationships through laughter, indicating early-developing social perception skills. Researchers from New York University and the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) observed that babies distinguish between laughter shared by friends and strangers, suggesting an innate ability to interpret social dynamics.
The findings, published in the journal Scientific Reports, involved two experiments measuring infants' responses to laughter recordings and visual cues. In the first test, babies listened longer to audio of friends laughing compared to strangers, demonstrating an apparent preference for familiar social bonds.
In the second experiment, infants were shown video clips of actors interacting—some displaying friendly gestures, others showing indifference. When the audio of laughter was mismatched with the visual context, babies stared longer, signaling surprise at the inconsistency. This behavior suggests they can associate vocal cues with social relationships.
Gregory Bryant, a UCLA communication professor, noted that shared laughter conveys relational information detectable in infants and adults globally. Athena Vouloumanos, an NYU psychology associate professor and co-author, concluded the ability to interpret laughter's social context may stem from an evolutionary
