Parental experience and professional training shape the perception of comfort and discomfort in preterm and term newborns

Article Article scientifique Article Parental experience and professional training shape the perception of comfort and discomfort in preterm and term newborns eng 2026-06-04 author Filippa Manuela 0000-0002-1310-8008 Swiss Center of Affective Sciences, Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences, University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland. manuela.filippa@unige.ch.,Division of Development and Growth, Department of Women's, Children's, and Adolescent Health, University Hospitals of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland. manuela.filippa@unige.ch. 890536 Section de psychologie (PSICO) author Barcos Munoz Francisca Mariana 0000-0001-7143-6117 Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, University Hospital of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland. 871644 Département de Pédiatrie, Gynécologie et Obstétrique (PETRI) Francisca Barcos Munoz author Rabatel E Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, University Hospital, Strasbourg, France. author Baertchy Sabrina Swiss Center of Affective Sciences, Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences, University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland. author Garcia Herrero Neus Swiss Center of Affective Sciences, Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences, University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland. 966737 author Zores C Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, University Hospital, Strasbourg, France.,Cognitive and Adaptative Neuroscience Laboratory, CNRS, Strasbourg, France. author Grandjean Didier Maurice Swiss Center of Affective Sciences, Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences, University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland. 502006 Section de psychologie (PSICO) author Kuhn P Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, University Hospital, Strasbourg, France.,Cognitive and Adaptative Neuroscience Laboratory, CNRS, Strasbourg, France.,Neonatal Research Unit, Department of Women's and Children's Health, Karolinska Institute, Stockholm, Sweden. 10.1038/s41598-026-54330-5 42243218 2045-2322 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-026-54330-5 Understanding the comfort or discomfort expressions of preterm and term newborns represents a challenge for both parents and nurses, particularly in hospitalization settings. While parents rely mainly on intuitive parenting abilities and parental experience, pediatric nurses receive specific training to recognize newborns' expressions. This study compared the perception of preterm and term infants' facial emotion expressions across five observer groups: 63 parents of hospitalized preterm infants, 53 parents of hospitalized term infants, 55 general parents, 91 naïve non-parents and 61 professional pediatric nurses (total N = 323). Observers from Strasbourg (France) and Geneva (Switzerland) rated 30 video extracts of preterm infants at 32- and 40-weeks PMA and of term infants, balanced across positive, negative, and neutral conditions. They judged the comfort, discomfort, or neutrality of expressions using a graduated scale. The objective was to assess the influence of training, professional, and parental experience on evaluations of newborns' emotional expressions. The effect of parenting emerges in valence judgement, with parents and non-parents' tendency to attribute discomfort to the newborn's expression, and nurses being more likely than all other groups to judge infant expressions as comfort. Across groups, preterm infants at 32 weeks were mainly perceived as uncomfortable, but ratings shifted toward comfort at 40 weeks, while term infants showed a more balanced profile. Finally, accuracy analyses showed that nurses were most accurate in recognizing comfort, parents performed best for discomfort, and non-parents achieved the highest accuracy for neutral expressions, with significant contrasts across all groups (p < .05). These findings highlight that the recognizability of infant emotional expressions depends on the infants' developmental maturation, while the accuracy and interpretive patterns of ratings are shaped by the observers' parental or professional experience. Comfort Discomfort Emotion expression Facial expressions Parental perception Preterm newborns Term newborns Dewey 150 108 Section de psychologie 71 false 594 Neuroscience de l'émotion et dynamiques affectives (NEAD) 1241 Affective sciences Scientific reports f8a28552-d7c8-4d60-801d-b9263eef32c7 Article (Published version) Public Article_scientifique_from_unpaywall.pdf 1338171 application/pdf CC BY-NC-ND 2818a8a6d266c22644668c292a1abb560e867c17371cffaf1aa738ed8a3f52db openAccess Faculté de psychologie et des sciences de l'éducation / Section de psychologie

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Parental experience and professional training shape the perception of comfort and discomfort in preterm and term newborns	Scientific reports	2026	5	20
An investigation of perceptual differences of an adult population with various levels of parental experience, regarding non-verbal signals emitted by full-term and premature newborns		2024	110	8

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