Department of Neurology, University of Lübeck, Lubeck, Germany.
Early Social Development, Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Leipzig, Germany.
Soc Neurosci. 2020 Feb;15(1):74-82. doi: 10.1080/17470919.2019.1651764. Epub 2019 Aug 9.
Humans automatically judge a person's trustworthiness solely based on facial features and use these judgments to inform subsequent behavior. While recent studies demonstrate that already infants are sensitive to variance in facial trustworthiness, it remains unclear whether this variance also influences subsequent socio-cognitive processes. We investigated event-related brain responses (ERPs) to faces varying in trustworthiness in a gaze-cueing paradigm in 7-month-old infants. Our analysis focused on the ERP responses to cued or un-cued objects shown in isolation after the gaze-cue was presented. We observed an enhanced occipital positive slow wave (PSW) to un-cued compared to cued objects, suggesting a gaze-cueing effect irrespective of facial trustworthiness. Furthermore, objects in the un-cued condition elicited a larger fronto-central Nc when the gaze cue was provided by trustworthy compared to untrustworthy faces. This pattern suggests that while gaze cueing occurs irrespective of facial trustworthiness, allocation of attention, as indexed by modulation of the Nc amplitude, varies as a function of trustworthiness. Taken together, our results show that facial trustworthiness impacts object processing in the context of a gaze cueing paradigm, adding to the notion that it serves as an important social cue from early in ontogeny.
人类会自动根据面部特征判断一个人的可信度，并利用这些判断来指导后续行为。虽然最近的研究表明，婴儿已经对面部可信度的差异敏感，但面部可信度的这种差异是否也会影响后续的社会认知过程仍不清楚。我们在一个注视线索范式中，使用 7 个月大的婴儿，调查了面部可信度差异对事件相关脑反应（ERPs）的影响。我们的分析集中在注视线索呈现后单独呈现的线索或未线索物体的 ERP 反应上。我们观察到，与有线索物体相比，未线索物体的枕部正慢波（PSW）增强，这表明无论面部可信度如何，都存在注视线索效应。此外，当注视线索来自可信的面孔而不是不可信的面孔时，未线索条件下的物体引发了更大的额-中央 Nc。这种模式表明，尽管注视线索的出现与面部可信度无关，但注意力的分配，如 Nc 幅度的调制，会随可信度的变化而变化。总之，我们的结果表明，面部可信度会影响注视线索范式中物体的处理，这进一步证明了它是一种从早期发展中就很重要的社会线索。
