Hiraoka Daiki, Makita Kai, Sakakibara Nobuko, Morioka Shigemi, Orisaka Makoto, Yoshida Yoshio, Tomoda Akemi
Research Center for Child Mental Development, University of Fukui, Fukui, Japan.
The Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, Tokyo, Japan.
Front Behav Neurosci. 2023 Sep 22;17:1192275. doi: 10.3389/fnbeh.2023.1192275. eCollection 2023.
Infant stimuli attract caregiver attention and motivate parenting behavior. Studies have confirmed the existence of attentional bias toward infant face stimuli; however, relatively little is known about whether attentional bias exists for infant cry stimuli, which are as important as faces in child-rearing situations. Furthermore, scarce longitudinal evidence exists on how attentional bias toward infant crying changes through the postpartum period.
In the present study, we conducted an experiment to assess bias toward infant crying at two postpartum time points: at Time 1 (Mean = 75.24 days), 45 first-time mothers participated and at Time 2 (Mean = 274.33 days), 30 mothers participated. At both time points, the mothers participated in a Stroop task with infant crying and white noise as the stimuli. They were instructed to answer the color out loud as quickly and accurately as possible, while ignoring the sound. Four types of audio stimuli were used in this task (the cry of the mother's own infant, the cry of an unfamiliar infant, white noise matched to the cry of the mother's own infant, and white noise matched to the cry of an unfamiliar infant), one of which was presented randomly before each trial. Response time and the correct response rate for each condition were the dependent variables.
For response time, the main effect of familiarity was significant, with longer response times when the participant's infant's cry was presented. In addition, response times were lower at Time 2 than at Time 1 in some conditions in which crying was presented.
The results suggest that mothers may be less disturbed by infant crying as they gain more experience. Elucidating the characteristics of postpartum mothers' changes in cognitive performance related to infants' cries would be useful in fundamental and applied research to understand the process of parents' adaptation to parenting.
婴儿刺激会吸引照顾者的注意力并激发养育行为。研究已证实存在对婴儿面部刺激的注意偏向；然而，对于在育儿情境中与面部同样重要的婴儿哭声刺激是否存在注意偏向，我们所知相对较少。此外，关于产后期间对婴儿哭声的注意偏向如何变化，几乎没有纵向证据。
在本研究中，我们进行了一项实验，以评估产后两个时间点对婴儿哭声的偏向：在时间1（平均 = 75.24天），45位初为人母者参与；在时间2（平均 = 274.33天），30位母亲参与。在两个时间点，母亲们都参与了一项以婴儿哭声和白噪音为刺激的斯特鲁普任务。她们被要求尽可能快速且准确地大声说出颜色，同时忽略声音。此任务使用了四种类型的音频刺激（母亲自己婴儿的哭声、陌生婴儿的哭声、与母亲自己婴儿哭声匹配的白噪音、与陌生婴儿哭声匹配的白噪音），每次试验前随机呈现其中一种。每种条件下的反应时间和正确反应率为因变量。
对于反应时间，熟悉度的主效应显著，当呈现参与者自己婴儿的哭声时反应时间更长。此外，在呈现哭声的某些条件下，时间2的反应时间比时间1更低。
结果表明，随着经验增加，母亲可能受婴儿哭声的干扰更小。阐明产后母亲与婴儿哭声相关的认知表现变化特征，将有助于基础研究和应用研究理解父母适应育儿的过程。
