Chen Jia, Zou Yan, Jia Yun Cheng, Ding Fang Yuan, Luo Jie, Cheng Gang
School of Psychology, Guizhou Normal University, Guiyang 550025, China; Center for Rural Children and Adolescents Mental Health Education, Guizhou Normal University, Guiyang 550025, China.
Department of Women and Children, The Second People's Hospital of Guizhou Province, Guiyang 550000, China.
J Exp Child Psychol. 2024 Jul;243:105928. doi: 10.1016/j.jecp.2024.105928. Epub 2024 Apr 21.
Previous studies have shown that adults exhibit the strongest attentional bias toward neutral infant faces when viewing faces with different expressions at different attentional processing stages due to different stimulus presentation times. However, it is not clear how the characteristics of the temporal processing associated with the strongest effect change over time. Thus, we combined a free-viewing task with eye-tracking technology to measure adults' attentional bias toward infant and adult faces with happy, neutral, and sad expressions of the same face. The results of the analysis of the total time course indicated that the strongest effect occurred during the strategic processing stage. However, the results of the analysis of the split time course revealed that sad infant faces first elicited adults' attentional bias at 0 to 500 ms, whereas the strongest effect of attentional bias toward neutral infant faces was observed at 1000 to 3000 ms, peaking at 1500 to 2000 ms. In addition, women and men had no differences in their responses to different expressions. In summary, this study provides further evidence that adults' attentional bias toward infant faces across stages of attention processing is modulated by expressions. Specifically, during automatic processing adults' attentional bias was directed toward sad infant faces, followed by a shift to the processing of neutral infant faces during strategic processing, which ultimately resulted in the strongest effect. These findings highlight that this strongest effect is dynamic and associated with a specific time window in the strategic process.
先前的研究表明，由于刺激呈现时间不同，成年人在不同的注意力加工阶段观看具有不同表情的面孔时，对中性婴儿面孔表现出最强的注意力偏向。然而，尚不清楚与最强效应相关的时间加工特征如何随时间变化。因此，我们将自由观看任务与眼动追踪技术相结合，以测量成年人对具有相同面孔的快乐、中性和悲伤表情的婴儿和成人面孔的注意力偏向。总时间进程分析结果表明，最强效应出现在策略性加工阶段。然而，分段时间进程分析结果显示，悲伤的婴儿面孔在0至500毫秒时首先引起成年人的注意力偏向，而对中性婴儿面孔的注意力偏向最强效应出现在1000至3000毫秒，在1500至2000毫秒达到峰值。此外，女性和男性对不同表情的反应没有差异。总之，本研究进一步证明，成年人在注意力加工各阶段对婴儿面孔的注意力偏向受表情调节。具体而言，在自动加工过程中，成年人的注意力偏向指向悲伤的婴儿面孔，随后在策略性加工过程中转向对中性婴儿面孔的加工，最终产生最强效应。这些发现突出表明，这种最强效应是动态的，且与策略过程中的特定时间窗口相关。
