Panda Expressions

  I feel the need to have clever titles for my posts, so since this post is about facial expressions and it occurred at Panda Express I have thus named it Panda Expressions! Oh so clever of me.
  The other day I went to Panda Express for lunch, addicted to the orange chicken, and as I got in line I noticed a toddler with her mother in the corner.  Just a quick glance, nothing really that remarkable.  So, I went about getting my lunch and in my search for a seat I ended up at the table next to the woman and her little girl.
   By this time it was the mother, father, and little girl...a cute young couple. As I was eating lunch the little girl kept looking at me, which of course I took as a compliment. I saw a study at some point that said that children tend to stare at pretty people :-)  Wordlessly I was interacting with the child, a little peek-a-boo, making funny faces, etc.  She was HILARIOUS!  I had never seen such a young child with such a wide range of facial expressions and such character.
   We continued "playing" throughout my meal and it got me thinking.  This seemingly normal child was now adorable and hilarious to me, which made me think she was most likely going to be one of the popular kids when she went to school.  With all that charm, who wouldn't want to be her friend and she is just like 1-2 years old. This got me thinking, I wonder if those "popular" kids all developed facial recognition earlier then maybe other kids.
   Now, maybe you are thinking "how did you get from there to here" and I will tell you it is related to a conversation I had last week with a couple strangers. We were talking about Autism and Aspergers. I have an increasing fasination with Autism and Aspergers from the time I first saw Ally McBeal with the Aspergers character and now with Braverman family on Parenthood dealing with their son's syndrome. My understanding is that part of Aspergers is that they are unable to pick up on social cues from their peers, family members, etc which leads to social isolation of sorts.  Which got me thinking there are varying degrees of each person's ability to pick up on social cues, read facial expressions, etc so I wonder if that is a key indicator in whether or not someone is seem as a "popular" or more likeable person in general as they move through life.
   I just find it interesting and would love to know if anyone has done any research on this theory. If no, maybe I will just have to start my own research study!