Department of Psychology, Ryerson University, Toronto, Ontario, Canada; Diagnostic Imaging, Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto, Ontario, Canada; Neurosciences and Mental Health Program, Research Institute, Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
Department of Psychology, Ryerson University, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
Dev Cogn Neurosci. 2020 Apr;42:100759. doi: 10.1016/j.dcn.2020.100759. Epub 2020 Jan 28.
An important feature of the development of emotion recognition in infants is the emergence of a robust attentional bias for fearful faces. There is some debate about when this enhanced sensitivity to fearful expressions develops. The current study explored whether 3-month-olds demonstrate differential behavioral and neural responding to happy and fearful faces. Three-month-old infants (n = 69) participated in a behavioral task that assessed whether they show a visual preference for fearful faces and an event-related potential (ERP) task that assessed their neural responses to fearful and happy faces. Infants showed a looking preference for fearful over happy faces. They also showed differential neural responding over occiptotemporal regions that have been implicated in face perception (i.e., N290, P400), but not over frontocentral regions that have been implicated in attentional processes (i.e., Nc). These findings suggest that 3-month-olds display an early perceptual sensitivity to fearful faces, which may presage the emergence of the attentional bias for fearful faces in older infants. Tracking the ontogeny of this phenomenon is necessary to understand its relationship with later developmental outcomes.
婴儿情绪识别发展的一个重要特征是对恐惧面孔出现强烈的注意力偏向。对于这种对恐惧表情的敏感性何时增强，存在一些争议。本研究探讨了 3 个月大的婴儿是否对快乐和恐惧面孔表现出不同的行为和神经反应。69 名 3 个月大的婴儿（n=69）参加了一项行为任务，评估他们是否对恐惧面孔表现出视觉偏好，以及一项事件相关电位（ERP）任务，评估他们对恐惧和快乐面孔的神经反应。婴儿对恐惧面孔的注视时间明显长于对快乐面孔的注视时间。他们还在涉及面孔感知的枕颞区域（即 N290、P400）而不是涉及注意力过程的额中央区域（即 Nc）表现出不同的神经反应。这些发现表明，3 个月大的婴儿对恐惧面孔表现出早期的感知敏感性，这可能预示着较大婴儿对恐惧面孔的注意力偏向的出现。追踪这种现象的发生对于理解它与后期发展结果的关系是必要的。
