Jeon Hana, Moulson Margaret C, Fox Nathan, Zeanah Charles, Nelson Charles A
David Geffen School of Medicine, University of California - Los Angeles.
Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Infancy. 2010 Mar;15(2):209-221. doi: 10.1111/j.1532-7078.2009.00007.x.
The current study examined the effects of institutionalization on the discrimination of facial expressions of emotion in 3 groups of 42-month-old children. One group consisted of children abandoned at birth who were randomly assigned to Care as Usual (institutional care) following a baseline assessment. Another group consisted of children abandoned at birth who were randomly assigned to high-quality foster care following a baseline assessment. A third group consisted of never-institutionalized children who were reared by their biological parents. All children were familiarized to happy, sad, fearful, and neutral facial expressions and tested on their ability to discriminate familiar versus novel facial expressions. Contrary to our prediction, all three groups of children were equally able to discriminate among the different expressions. Furthermore, in contrast to findings at 13-30 months of age, these same children showed familiarity rather than novelty preferences toward different expressions. There were also asymmetries in children's discrimination of facial expressions depending on which facial expression served as the familiar versus the novel stimulus. Collectively, early institutionalization appears not to impact the development of the ability to discriminate facial expressions of emotion, at least when preferential looking serves as the dependent measure. These findings are discussed in the context of the myriad domains that affected by early institutionalization.
本研究考察了机构化对三组42个月大儿童面部表情识别能力的影响。一组由出生时被遗弃的儿童组成，在基线评估后，他们被随机分配到常规照料组（机构照料）。另一组由出生时被遗弃的儿童组成，在基线评估后，他们被随机分配到高质量寄养组。第三组由从未进入机构照料的儿童组成，他们由亲生父母抚养。所有儿童都熟悉了开心、悲伤、恐惧和中性的面部表情，并测试了他们区分熟悉和新奇面部表情的能力。与我们的预测相反，三组儿童在区分不同表情方面的能力相同。此外，与13至30个月大时的研究结果不同，这些儿童对不同表情表现出熟悉偏好而非新奇偏好。根据作为熟悉刺激与新奇刺激的面部表情不同，儿童在面部表情识别上也存在不对称性。总体而言，早期机构化似乎不会影响面部表情识别能力的发展，至少在以优先注视作为因变量时是这样。我们将在受早期机构化影响的众多领域的背景下讨论这些发现。
