Christou Antonios I, Fanti Kostas, Mavrommatis Ioannis, Soursou Georgia
Department of Special Education, University of Thessaly, 38221 Volos, Greece.
Department of Psychology, University of Cyprus, 1678 Nicosia, Cyprus.
Children (Basel). 2025 Jun 25;12(7):839. doi: 10.3390/children12070839.
BACKGROUND/OBJECTIVES: Sensory Processing Sensitivity (SPS), particularly its aesthetic subcomponent (Aesthetic Sensitivity; AES), has been linked to individual differences in emotional processing. This study examined whether parental visual attention to emotional facial expressions predicts corresponding attentional patterns in their children, and whether this intergenerational concordance is mediated by child AES and moderated by child empathy.
A sample of 124 Greek Cypriot parent-child dyads (children aged 7-12 years) participated in an eye-tracking experiment. Both parents and children viewed static emotional facial expressions (angry, sad, fearful, happy). Parents also completed questionnaires assessing their child's SPS, empathy (cognitive and affective), and emotional functioning. Regression analyses and moderated mediation models were employed to explore associations between parental and child gaze patterns.
Children's fixation on angry eyes was significantly predicted by parental fixation duration on the same region, as well as by child AES and empathy levels. Moderated mediation analyses revealed that the association between parent and child gaze to angry eyes was significantly mediated by child AES. However, neither cognitive nor affective empathy significantly moderated this mediation effect.
Findings suggest that child AES plays a key mediating role in the intergenerational transmission of attentional biases to emotional stimuli. While empathy was independently associated with children's gaze behavior, it did not moderate the AES-mediated pathway. These results highlight the importance of trait-level child sensitivity in shaping shared emotional attention patterns within families.
背景/目的：感觉加工敏感性（SPS），尤其是其审美子成分（审美敏感性；AES），已与情绪加工中的个体差异相关联。本研究考察了父母对情绪性面部表情的视觉注意力是否能预测其子女相应的注意力模式，以及这种代际一致性是否由儿童AES介导并受儿童同理心调节。
124对希腊塞浦路斯亲子二元组（孩子年龄在7至12岁之间）参与了一项眼动追踪实验。父母和孩子都观看静态的情绪性面部表情（愤怒、悲伤、恐惧、高兴）。父母还完成了评估其孩子的SPS、同理心（认知和情感）以及情绪功能的问卷。采用回归分析和调节中介模型来探究父母与孩子注视模式之间的关联。
父母在同一区域的注视持续时间以及孩子的AES和同理心水平显著预测了孩子对愤怒眼睛的注视。调节中介分析表明，父母与孩子对愤怒眼睛的注视之间的关联显著由孩子的AES介导。然而，认知同理心和情感同理心均未显著调节这种中介效应。
研究结果表明，儿童AES在注意力偏差向情绪刺激的代际传递中起关键中介作用。虽然同理心与孩子的注视行为独立相关，但它并未调节AES介导的路径。这些结果凸显了特质水平的儿童敏感性在塑造家庭内共享情绪注意力模式中的重要性。
