Bayet Laurie, Quinn Paul C, Laboissière Rafael, Caldara Roberto, Lee Kang, Pascalis Olivier
LPNC, Université Grenoble-Alpes, 38000 Grenoble, France
LPNC, CNRS, 38000 Grenoble, France.
Proc Biol Sci. 2017 Sep 13;284(1862). doi: 10.1098/rspb.2017.1054.
Human adults show an attentional bias towards fearful faces, an adaptive behaviour that relies on amygdala function. This attentional bias emerges in infancy between 5 and 7 months, but the underlying developmental mechanism is unknown. To examine possible precursors, we investigated whether 3.5-, 6- and 12-month-old infants show facilitated of fearful faces in noise, compared to happy faces. Happy or fearful faces, mixed with noise, were presented to infants ( = 192), paired with pure noise. We applied multivariate pattern analyses to several measures of infant looking behaviour to derive a criterion-free, continuous measure of face detection evidence in each trial. Analyses of the resulting psychometric curves supported the hypothesis of a detection advantage for fearful faces compared to happy faces, from 3.5 months of age and across all age groups. Overall, our data show a readiness to detect fearful faces (compared to happy faces) in younger infants that developmentally precedes the previously documented attentional bias to fearful faces in older infants and adults.
成年人类对恐惧面孔表现出注意力偏向，这是一种依赖杏仁核功能的适应性行为。这种注意力偏向在5至7个月大的婴儿期出现，但其潜在的发育机制尚不清楚。为了研究可能的先兆，我们调查了3.5个月、6个月和12个月大的婴儿与开心面孔相比，是否在噪声中更容易察觉到恐惧面孔。将开心或恐惧面孔与噪声混合后呈现给192名婴儿，并与纯噪声配对。我们对婴儿注视行为的多项指标进行多变量模式分析，以得出每个试验中无标准的、连续的面孔检测证据测量值。对所得心理测量曲线的分析支持了这样的假设，即与开心面孔相比，从3.5个月大开始以及在所有年龄组中，恐惧面孔都具有检测优势。总体而言，我们的数据表明，年幼儿童（与开心面孔相比）在发育上先于先前记录的年长婴儿和成年人对恐惧面孔的注意力偏向，他们更容易察觉到恐惧面孔。
