School of Psychology, Guizhou Normal University, Guiyang, China.
Faculty of Psychology, Southwest University, Chongqing, China.
Psychophysiology. 2022 Jan;59(1):e13944. doi: 10.1111/psyp.13944. Epub 2021 Sep 22.
Recent studies that used adult faces as the baseline have revealed that attentional bias toward infant faces is the strongest for neutral expressions than for happy and sad expressions. However, the time course of the strongest attentional bias toward infant neutral expressions is unclear. To clarify this time course, we combined a behavioral dot-probe task with electrophysiological event-related potentials (ERPs) to measure adults' responses to infant and adult faces with happy, neutral, and sad expressions derived from the same face. The results indicated that compared with the corresponding expressions in adult faces, attentional bias toward infant faces with various expressions resulted in different patterns during rapid and prolonged attention stages. In particular, first, neutral expressions in infant faces elicited greater behavioral attentional bias and P1 responses than happy and sad ones did. Second, sad expressions in infant faces elicited greater N170 responses than neutral and happy ones did; notably, sad expressions elicited greater N170 responses in the left hemisphere in women than in men. Third, late positive potential (LPP) responses were greater for infant faces than for adult faces under each expression condition. Thus, we propose a three-stage model of attentional allocation patterns that reveals the time course of attentional bias toward infant faces with various expressions. This model highlights the prominent role of neutral facial expressions in the attentional bias toward infant faces.
最近的一些研究以成人面孔为基线，发现相较于快乐和悲伤表情，婴儿面孔的中性表情会引起最强的注意偏向。然而，对于婴儿中性表情的最强注意偏向的时间进程尚不清楚。为了阐明这一时间进程，我们结合行为点探测任务和电生理事件相关电位（ERPs），测量了成年人对源自同一张面孔的快乐、中性和悲伤表情的婴儿和成人面孔的反应。结果表明，相较于成人面孔的相应表情，对于具有各种表情的婴儿面孔，注意偏向在快速和持续注意阶段会产生不同的模式。特别是，第一，相较于快乐和悲伤表情，婴儿面孔的中性表情会引起更大的行为注意偏向和 P1 反应。第二，相较于中性和快乐表情，婴儿面孔的悲伤表情会引起更大的 N170 反应；值得注意的是，女性左半球的悲伤表情会引起比男性更大的 N170 反应。第三，在每个表情条件下，婴儿面孔的晚期正电位（LPP）反应大于成人面孔。因此，我们提出了一个三阶段的注意分配模式模型，揭示了具有各种表情的婴儿面孔的注意偏向的时间进程。该模型突出了中性面部表情在婴儿面孔注意偏向中的重要作用。
