Yrttiaho Santeri, Niehaus Dana, Thomas Eileen, Leppänen Jukka M
Tampere Center for Child Health Research, School of Medicine, University of Tampere, Lääkärinkatu 1, 33520, Tampere, Finland.
Department of Psychiatry, Faculty of Health Sciences, Stellenbosch University, Stellenbosch, South Africa.
Behav Brain Funct. 2017 Feb 6;13(1):2. doi: 10.1186/s12993-017-0120-9.
Human parental care relies heavily on the ability to monitor and respond to a child's affective states. The current study examined pupil diameter as a potential physiological index of mothers' affective response to infant facial expressions.
Pupillary time-series were measured from 86 mothers of young infants in response to an array of photographic infant faces falling into four emotive categories based on valence (positive vs. negative) and arousal (mild vs. strong).
Pupil dilation was highly sensitive to the valence of facial expressions, being larger for negative vs. positive facial expressions. A separate control experiment with luminance-matched non-face stimuli indicated that the valence effect was specific to facial expressions and cannot be explained by luminance confounds. Pupil response was not sensitive to the arousal level of facial expressions.
The results show the feasibility of using pupil diameter as a marker of mothers' affective responses to ecologically valid infant stimuli and point to a particularly prompt maternal response to infant distress cues.
人类的亲代照料在很大程度上依赖于监测和回应孩子情感状态的能力。本研究将瞳孔直径作为母亲对婴儿面部表情情感反应的潜在生理指标进行了检验。
对86名幼儿母亲的瞳孔时间序列进行了测量，这些母亲观看了一系列根据效价（积极与消极）和唤醒度（轻度与强烈）分为四类情感类别的婴儿照片。
瞳孔扩张对面部表情的效价高度敏感，负面面部表情相比正面面部表情会引起更大的瞳孔扩张。一项使用亮度匹配的非面部刺激的单独对照实验表明，效价效应是面部表情所特有的，不能用亮度混淆来解释。瞳孔反应对面部表情的唤醒水平不敏感。
结果表明，将瞳孔直径用作母亲对生态有效婴儿刺激情感反应的指标具有可行性，并表明母亲对婴儿痛苦线索的反应尤为迅速。
