Infants' attention is biased by emotional expressions and eye gaze direction

Author(s)
Stefanie Hoehl, Letizia Palumbo, Christine Heinisch, Tricia Striano
Abstract

This study investigates infants' processing of emotional expressions in combination with referential eye gaze cues. In experiment 1, 7-month-old infants' neural responses to fearful and neutral faces, which were looking at a novel object, were assessed. Infants' attention, as indexed by the negative central component of the event-related potential, was enhanced when the adult gazed at the object with a fearful expression compared with a neutral expression. In experiment 2, no effect of emotion on amplitude of the negative central was found when the face directed eye gaze at the infant and away from the object. We conclude that by 7 months, infants use emotional expressions in triadic person-object-person contexts to detect threat in the environment.

Organisation(s)
External organisation(s)
Max-Planck-Institut für Kognitions- und Neurowissenschaften, Sapienza University of Rome, Ruhr-Universität Bochum (RUB), City University of New York
Journal
NEUROREPORT
Volume
19
Pages
579-582
No. of pages
4
ISSN
0959-4965
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1097/WNR.0b013e3282f97897
Publication date
2008
Peer reviewed
Yes
Austrian Fields of Science 2012
501005 Developmental psychology
Keywords
Portal url
https://ucrisportal.univie.ac.at/en/publications/infants-attention-is-biased-by-emotional-expressions-and-eye-gaze-direction(94aa252a-9bf3-4fb5-bc1d-502a24b9a7f7).html