Christou Antonios I, Fanti Kostas, Mavrommatis Ioannis, Soursou Georgia, Pergantis Pantelis, Drigas Athanasios
Department of Special Education, University of Thessaly, 382 21 Volos, Greece.
Department of Psychology, University of Cyprus, Nicosia 1678, Cyprus.
Children (Basel). 2025 Apr 18;12(4):524. doi: 10.3390/children12040524.
Low social affiliation has been described as a phenotypic marker of antisocial behaviors by disrupting children's initiation and enjoyment of positive physical and emotional connections with others. Laboratory studies have shown that, in early childhood, low social affiliation rates are preceded by lower attention to faces. In addition, while low social affiliation has also been associated with behavioral outcomes when accounting for parenting influences, the effect that parental environmental sensitivity may have on contributing to the link between emotional processing early in life and later behavioral manifestations associated with antisocial behavior is currently unknown.
The present eye-tracking study aims to delineate the potential contribution of parental Sensory Processing Sensitivity (SPS) to the link between children's rates of social affiliation and their attentional patterns in response to emotional faces.
For the needs of this study, children performed a lab-based, computerized facial processing task (N = 153; = 9.97; = 1.28; 48.8% females). In addition, one of the children's parents completed questionnaires for their children's and their own behavior (N = 153; = 40.9; = 4.85; 87.7% females).
The results underline the contributing role of parental SPS on the associations between social affiliation and visual scanning when viewing angry emotional faces. In particular, children with low rates of social affiliation spent significantly more time fixating on the mouth regions of angry faces only when their parents had higher SPS.
This study unveils the possibility for the contextual influence of parental environmental sensitivity on the early emotional processing mechanisms in children with low rates of social affiliation. These findings suggest that interventions aimed at improving emotional processing in children at risk for antisocial behavior should consider parental SPS as a contributing factor. Tailoring parent-based interventions to address how highly sensitive parents interpret and respond to emotional challenges may reduce children's attentional biases to threats and support healthier socioemotional development.
低社会归属感被描述为反社会行为的一种表型标记，因为它会干扰儿童与他人建立积极身体和情感联系并从中获得乐趣。实验室研究表明，在幼儿期，社会归属感低之前是对面孔的关注度较低。此外，虽然在考虑养育影响时，低社会归属感也与行为结果相关，但父母的环境敏感性对生命早期情绪处理与后来与反社会行为相关的行为表现之间的联系可能产生的影响目前尚不清楚。
本眼动追踪研究旨在描绘父母的感官处理敏感性（SPS）对儿童社会归属感发生率与其对情绪化面孔的注意力模式之间联系的潜在贡献。
出于本研究的需要，儿童进行了一项基于实验室的计算机化面部处理任务（N = 153；年龄 = 9.97岁；标准差 = 1.28；48.8%为女性）。此外，儿童的一位家长填写了关于孩子和他们自己行为的问卷（N = 153；年龄 = 40.9岁；标准差 = 4.85；87.7%为女性）。
结果强调了父母的SPS在观看愤怒情绪面孔时对社会归属感与视觉扫描之间关联的促进作用。特别是，只有当父母具有较高的SPS时，社会归属感低的儿童才会花更多时间注视愤怒面孔的嘴部区域。
本研究揭示了父母环境敏感性对社会归属感低的儿童早期情绪处理机制产生背景影响的可能性。这些发现表明，旨在改善有反社会行为风险儿童情绪处理的干预措施应将父母的SPS视为一个促成因素。针对高度敏感的父母如何解释和应对情绪挑战来调整基于父母的干预措施，可能会减少儿童对威胁的注意力偏差，并支持更健康的社会情感发展。
