Department of Psychiatry, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA, USA.
Department of Psychology, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA, USA.
Dev Psychobiol. 2021 Sep;63(6):e22024. doi: 10.1002/dev.22024. Epub 2020 Aug 6.
Attention to socio-emotional stimuli (i.e., affect-biased attention) is an integral component of emotion regulation and human communication. Given the strong link between maternal affect and adolescent behavior, maternal affect may be a critical influence on adolescent affect-biased attention during mother-child interaction. However, prior methodological constraints have precluded fine-grained examinations of factors such as maternal affect on adolescent attention during real-world social interaction. Therefore, this pilot study capitalized on previously validated technological advances by using mobile eye-tracking and facial affect coding software to quantify the influence of maternal affect on adolescents' attention to the mother during a conflict discussion. Results from 7,500 to 9,000 time points sampled for each mother-daughter dyad (n = 28) indicated that both negative and positive maternal affect, relative to neutral, elicited more adolescent attentional avoidance of the mother (ORs = 2.68-9.20), suggesting that typically developing adolescents may seek to avoid focusing on maternal affect of either valence during a conflict discussion. By examining the moment-to-moment association between in vivo displays of maternal affect and subsequent adolescent attention toward the mother's face, these results provide preliminary evidence that maternal affect moderates adolescent attention. Our findings are consistent with cross-species approach-avoidance models suggesting that offspring respond to affectively charged conversations with greater behavioral avoidance or deference.
注意社会情感刺激（即情绪偏向注意）是情绪调节和人类交流的一个组成部分。鉴于母亲的情绪与青少年的行为之间存在很强的联系，母亲的情绪可能是母亲与孩子互动过程中青少年情绪偏向注意的关键影响因素。然而，先前的方法学限制排除了对母亲情绪对青少年在现实社会互动中注意力的影响等因素的细致研究。因此，这项初步研究利用了先前经过验证的技术进步，使用移动眼动追踪和面部情感编码软件来量化母亲的情感对青少年在冲突讨论中对母亲注意力的影响。从每个母女对子（n=28）中采样的 7500 到 9000 个时间点的结果表明，与中性相比，无论是负性还是正性的母亲情绪都引起了青少年更多的对母亲注意力的回避（ORs=2.68-9.20），这表明典型的发展中的青少年在冲突讨论中可能会试图避免关注母亲的任何一种情绪。通过检查母亲情感的即时显示与随后青少年对母亲面部的注意力之间的瞬间关联，这些结果提供了初步证据表明母亲的情感调节了青少年的注意力。我们的发现与跨物种的趋近回避模型一致，该模型表明后代会对情绪激动的对话做出更大的行为回避或顺从反应。
