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Zeng G, Maylott SE, Leung TS, Messinger DS, Wang J, Simpson EA. Infant temperamental fear, pupil dilation, and gaze aversion from smiling strangers. Dev Psychobiol 2022; 64:e22324. [PMID: 36282740 DOI: 10.1002/dev.22324] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/05/2021] [Revised: 07/06/2022] [Accepted: 08/17/2022] [Indexed: 01/27/2023]
Abstract
In childhood, higher levels of temperamental fear-an early-emerging proclivity to distress in the face of novelty-are associated with lower social responsivity and greater social anxiety. While the early emergence of temperamental fear in infancy is poorly understood, it is theorized to be driven by individual differences in reactivity and self-regulation to novel stimuli. The current study used eye tracking to capture infants' (N = 124) reactions to a video of a smiling stranger-a common social encounter-including infant gaze aversions from the stranger's face (indexing arousal regulation) and pupil dilation (indexing physiological reactivity), longitudinally at 2, 4, 6, and 8 months of age. Multilevel mixed-effects models indicated that more fearful infants took more time to look away from a smiling stranger's face than less fearful infants, suggesting that high-fear infants may have slower arousal regulation. At 2 and 4 months, more fearful infants also exhibited greater and faster pupil dilation before gaze aversions, consistent with greater physiological reactivity. Together, these findings suggest that individual differences in infants' gaze aversions and pupil dilation can index the development of fearful temperament in early infancy, facilitating the identification of, and interventions for, risk factors to social disruptions.
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Affiliation(s)
- Guangyu Zeng
- Department of Psychology, University of Miami, Coral Gables, Florida, USA
| | - Sarah E Maylott
- Department of Psychology, University of Miami, Coral Gables, Florida, USA.,Department of Psychology, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah, USA.,Department of Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina, USA
| | - Tiffany S Leung
- Department of Psychology, University of Miami, Coral Gables, Florida, USA
| | - Daniel S Messinger
- Department of Psychology, University of Miami, Coral Gables, Florida, USA.,Departments of Pediatrics, Music Engineering, Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Miami, Coral Gables, Florida, USA
| | - Jue Wang
- Department of Psychology, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, China
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Poncet F, Leleu A, Rekow D, Damon F, Dzhelyova MP, Schaal B, Durand K, Faivre L, Rossion B, Baudouin JY. A neural marker of rapid discrimination of facial expression in 3.5- and 7-month-old infants. Front Neurosci 2022; 16:901013. [PMID: 36061610 PMCID: PMC9434348 DOI: 10.3389/fnins.2022.901013] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/21/2022] [Accepted: 07/29/2022] [Indexed: 01/23/2023] Open
Abstract
Infants’ ability to discriminate facial expressions has been widely explored, but little is known about the rapid and automatic ability to discriminate a given expression against many others in a single experiment. Here we investigated the development of facial expression discrimination in infancy with fast periodic visual stimulation coupled with scalp electroencephalography (EEG). EEG was recorded in eighteen 3.5- and eighteen 7-month-old infants presented with a female face expressing disgust, happiness, or a neutral emotion (in different stimulation sequences) at a base stimulation frequency of 6 Hz. Pictures of the same individual expressing other emotions (either anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, or neutrality, randomly and excluding the expression presented at the base frequency) were introduced every six stimuli (at 1 Hz). Frequency-domain analysis revealed an objective (i.e., at the predefined 1-Hz frequency and harmonics) expression-change brain response in both 3.5- and 7-month-olds, indicating the visual discrimination of various expressions from disgust, happiness and neutrality from these early ages. At 3.5 months, the responses to the discrimination from disgust and happiness expressions were located mainly on medial occipital sites, whereas a more lateral topography was found for the response to the discrimination from neutrality, suggesting that expression discrimination from an emotionally neutral face relies on distinct visual cues than discrimination from a disgust or happy face. Finally, expression discrimination from happiness was associated with a reduced activity over posterior areas and an additional response over central frontal scalp regions at 7 months as compared to 3.5 months. This result suggests developmental changes in the processing of happiness expressions as compared to negative/neutral ones within this age range.
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Affiliation(s)
- Fanny Poncet
- Development of Olfactory Communication and Cognition Laboratory, Centre des Sciences du Goût et de l’Alimentation, CNRS, Université Bourgogne Franche-Comté, INRAE, Institut Agro, Dijon, France
- Université Grenoble Alpes, Saint-Martin-d’Hères, France
- *Correspondence: Fanny Poncet,
| | - Arnaud Leleu
- Development of Olfactory Communication and Cognition Laboratory, Centre des Sciences du Goût et de l’Alimentation, CNRS, Université Bourgogne Franche-Comté, INRAE, Institut Agro, Dijon, France
| | - Diane Rekow
- Development of Olfactory Communication and Cognition Laboratory, Centre des Sciences du Goût et de l’Alimentation, CNRS, Université Bourgogne Franche-Comté, INRAE, Institut Agro, Dijon, France
| | - Fabrice Damon
- Development of Olfactory Communication and Cognition Laboratory, Centre des Sciences du Goût et de l’Alimentation, CNRS, Université Bourgogne Franche-Comté, INRAE, Institut Agro, Dijon, France
| | | | - Benoist Schaal
- Development of Olfactory Communication and Cognition Laboratory, Centre des Sciences du Goût et de l’Alimentation, CNRS, Université Bourgogne Franche-Comté, INRAE, Institut Agro, Dijon, France
| | - Karine Durand
- Development of Olfactory Communication and Cognition Laboratory, Centre des Sciences du Goût et de l’Alimentation, CNRS, Université Bourgogne Franche-Comté, INRAE, Institut Agro, Dijon, France
| | - Laurence Faivre
- Inserm UMR 1231 GAD, Genetics of Developmental Disorders, and Centre de Référence Maladies Rares “Anomalies du Développement et Syndromes Malformatifs,” FHU TRANSLAD, CHU Dijon and Université de Bourgogne-Franche Comté, Dijon, France
| | - Bruno Rossion
- Université de Lorraine, CNRS, CRAN–UMR 7039, Nancy, France
- Service de Neurologie, Université de Lorraine, CHRU-Nancy, Nancy, France
| | - Jean-Yves Baudouin
- Laboratoire “Développement, Individu, Processus, Handicap, Éducation”, Département Psychologie du Développement, de l’Éducation et des Vulnérabilités, Institut de Psychologie, Université de Lyon, Université Lumière Lyon 2, Bron, France
- Jean-Yves Baudouin,
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Prunty JE, Keemink JR, Kelly DJ. Infants show pupil dilatory responses to happy and angry facial expressions. Dev Sci 2021; 25:e13182. [PMID: 34633123 DOI: 10.1111/desc.13182] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/19/2021] [Revised: 08/31/2021] [Accepted: 09/22/2021] [Indexed: 11/29/2022]
Abstract
Facial expressions are one way in which infants and adults communicate emotion. Infants scan expressions similarly to adults, yet it remains unclear whether they are receptive to the affective information they convey. The current study investigates 6-, 9- and 12-month infants' (N = 146) pupillary responses to the six "basic" emotional expressions (happy, sad, surprise, fear, anger, and disgust). To do this we use dynamic stimuli and gaze-contingent eye-tracking to simulate brief interactive exchanges, alongside a static control condition. Infants' arousal responses were stronger for dynamic compared to static stimuli. And for dynamic stimuli we found that, compared to neutral, infants showed dilatory responses for happy and angry expressions only. Although previous work has shown infants can discriminate perceptually between facial expressions, our data suggest that sensitivity to the affective content of all six basic emotional expressions may not fully emerge until later in ontogeny.
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Affiliation(s)
| | | | - David J Kelly
- School of Psychology, University of Kent, Canterbury, UK
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