Harriet Oster, Ph.D.

Dr. Harriet Oster is on the faculty of New York University, most recently with an appointment of "master teacher" in the McGhee Division of Continuing Education and Professional Studies. Dr. Oster has also been affiliated with the Institute of Reconstructive Plastic Surgery, New York University School of Medicine, and has studied the effects of infant facial anomalies on expressions and infant-caregiver interactions.    

Her research on infant facial expressions represents the ontogenetic view that infant facial expressions are neither undifferentiated precursors nor equivalents in structure and meaning to adult expressions.  The ontogenetic view argues that infantile emotion expressions were selected for their survival value during infancy (Oppenheim, 1981) and preadapted for adult facial expression.  Dr. Oster’s ontogenetic views guided development of BabyFACS, an adaptation of Paul Ekman’s Facial Action Coding System (FACS) . 

Most cited article (266 citations):

Ekman, P. & Oster, A. (1979). Facial expressions of emotion. Annual Review of Psychology, 30, 527-554.