Todd Rebecca M, Lewis Marc D, Meusel Liesel-Ann, Zelazo Philip David
Human Development and Applied Psychology. Ontario Institute for Studies in Education,University of Toronto, Canada.
Neuropsychologia. 2008 Jan 31;46(2):595-613. doi: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2007.10.011. Epub 2007 Oct 23.
To date, little is known about the neural underpinnings of social-emotional processes in young children. The present study investigated the time course of children's ERP responses to facial expression and personal familiarity, and the effect of these variables on ERP measures of effortful attention in a Go-Nogo task. Dense-array EEG was collected from 48 4-6-year-old children who were presented with pictures of their mothers' and strangers' happy and angry faces. ERPs were scored following face presentation and following a subsequent cue signaling a Go or Nogo response. Responses to face presentation showed early perceptual components that were larger following strangers' faces, suggesting facilitated rapid processing of personally important faces. A mid-latency frontocentral negativity was greatest following angry mothers' faces, indicating increased attentional monitoring and/or recognition memory evoked by an angry parent. Finally a right-lateralized late positive component was largest following angry faces, suggesting extended processing of negatively valenced social stimuli in general. Following the Go-Nogo response cue, a right-lateralized mid-latency negativity thought to measure effortful attention was larger in Nogo than Go trials, and following angry than happy faces, possibly reflecting increased effortful control required in those conditions. The present study suggests that overlapping but differentiated networks for both rapid and elaborative processing of important socio-affective information are established by 4-6 years. Moreover, the extended spatial and temporal distribution of components suggests a pattern of response to social stimuli in which more rapid processes may index personal familiarity, whereas temporally extended processes are sensitive to affective valence on both familiar and unfamiliar faces.
迄今为止，对于幼儿社会情感过程的神经基础知之甚少。本研究调查了儿童对面部表情和个人熟悉度的事件相关电位（ERP）反应的时间进程，以及这些变量对Go-Nogo任务中努力注意的ERP测量指标的影响。对48名4至6岁儿童进行了高密度脑电图（EEG）采集，他们观看了母亲和陌生人开心与愤怒面孔的图片。在呈现面孔后以及随后出现提示信号指示执行“Go”或“Nogo”反应后，对ERP进行评分。对面孔呈现的反应显示出早期感知成分，陌生人面孔后的这些成分更大，这表明对个人重要面孔的快速处理得到促进。愤怒母亲面孔后的中潜伏期额中央负波最大，表明愤怒的父母引发了注意力监测和/或识别记忆的增强。最后，愤怒面孔后的右侧化晚期正波成分最大，这表明一般情况下对负性情绪社会刺激的处理会延长。在“Go-Nogo”反应提示后，被认为用于测量努力注意的右侧化中潜伏期负波在“Nogo”试验中比“Go”试验更大，并且在愤怒面孔后比开心面孔后更大，这可能反映了在这些情况下需要更多的努力控制。本研究表明，在4至6岁时就建立了用于重要社会情感信息快速和精细处理的重叠但有区别的神经网络。此外，成分的空间和时间分布扩展表明了一种对社会刺激的反应模式，其中更快的过程可能指示个人熟悉度，而时间上延长的过程对熟悉和不熟悉面孔的情感效价都很敏感。
