Department for Psychology, University of Heidelberg, Germany.
Dev Sci. 2010 Nov;13(6):813-25. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-7687.2009.00944.x.
Recent research has demonstrated that infants' attention towards novel objects is affected by an adult's emotional expression and eye gaze toward the object. The current event-related potential (ERP) study investigated how infants at 3, 6, and 9 months of age process fearful compared to neutral faces looking toward objects or averting gaze away from objects. Furthermore, we examined how the processing of novel objects is affected by gaze direction and emotional expression. We hypothesized that an adult's fearful expression should be particularly salient when it is directed toward a referent in the environment. Furthermore, responses to objects should be increased if the face previously expressed fear toward the object. Three-month-olds did not show differential neural responses to fearful vs. neutral faces regardless of gaze direction. Six-month-olds showed an enhanced negative central (Nc) component for fearful relative to neutral faces looking toward objects, but not when eye gaze was averted away from the objects. Furthermore, 6-month-olds showed an enhanced Nc for objects that had been gaze-cued by a fearful compared to a neutral face. Nine-month-olds showed an enhanced Nc for fearful relative to neutral faces in both eye gaze conditions and showed an enhanced Nc for objects that had been gaze-cued by a neutral face. The findings are discussed in the context of social cognitive and brain development.
最近的研究表明，婴儿对新奇物体的注意力受到成人对物体的情绪表达和眼神注视的影响。本事件相关电位（ERP）研究调查了 3、6 和 9 个月大的婴儿如何处理看向物体的恐惧与中性面孔，以及将目光从物体上移开的恐惧与中性面孔。此外，我们还研究了注视方向和情绪表达如何影响对新奇物体的处理。我们假设，当成人的恐惧表情指向环境中的参照时，这种表情应该特别突出。此外，如果先前的面孔对物体表现出恐惧，那么对物体的反应应该会增加。3 个月大的婴儿无论注视方向如何，对恐惧与中性面孔都没有表现出不同的神经反应。6 个月大的婴儿在看向物体时，对恐惧面孔的负中央（Nc）成分比中性面孔增强，但当目光从物体上移开时则没有。此外，6 个月大的婴儿对被恐惧面孔而不是中性面孔注视引导的物体表现出增强的 Nc。9 个月大的婴儿在两种注视条件下对恐惧面孔的 Nc 增强，对被中性面孔注视引导的物体的 Nc 增强。研究结果在社会认知和大脑发育的背景下进行了讨论。
