It is estimated that postpartum depression affects up to 25% of men. Despite such high prevalence, the majority of studies on postpartum depression are focused on mothers, and the role of paternal depression and its effects on infant development have been overlooked by researchers and clinicians. The present study aimed to fill this gap by investigating the effect of paternal postpartum depression on father–infant interactions. In addition, we examined whether differences in face recognition mediated the effects of paternal postpartum depression on father–infant interactions. A total of 61 father–infant dyads (17 postpartum depression, 44 controls) took part in the study. Results revealed that compared to controls, fathers with postpartum depression had a worse pattern of interaction with their infants on measures of responsiveness, mood, and sensitivity; they also had greater difficulty in recognizing happy adult faces, but greater facility in recognizing sad adult faces. Depressed fathers attributed greater intensities to sad adult and infant faces. The tendency to attribute greater intensity to sad adult faces was confirmed as a partial mediator of the effect of paternal postpartum depression on measures of father responsiveness and as a full mediator of the effects of paternal depression on father sensitivity. Clinical implications and suggestions for further studies are discussed.

To date, research on infant face processing has focused on the appraisal of physical features, but investigations of the effects of sex and parental status on infant emotional expressions have been less prevalent. The present study sought to fill this gap by investigating the effects of sex and parental status on the assessment of infant emotional faces using a community sample of 105 participants (55 female) who were split into 2 groups according to parental status: 53 parents (28 female) comprised those who had a child aged <10 years, and 52 nonparents (27 female) comprised those who did not have children and did not work in a childcare environment. A total of 116 infant faces were presented under 5 emotional conditions (positive, muted positive, neutral, muted negative, and negative). The participants were instructed to rate each facial expression with regard to 3 aspects: pleasure, activation, and intensity. The results revealed a significant effect of group, with nonparents perceiving happy and sad infant faces as more intense than parents. We hypothesize that because parents are frequently exposed to intense emotions of their children, their range of intensity may be wider. Therefore, the parents tend to assign a lower intensity to infant emotional faces. In addition, no differences were found between men and women, regardless of parental status, in any of the aspects that were evaluated (pleasure, activation, and intensity) for any emotional expressions (sad, happy, and neutral). This corroborates findings that mothers and fathers are also often more similar than different in their cognitive responses to children.

O transtorno de personalidade borderline (TPB) tem como uma característica principal uma dificuldade de relacionamento interpessoal. O viés atencional (VA) seria a locação diferencial a estímulos considerados ameaçadores em detrimento a estímulos neutros. Saber se as pessoas com TPB tem um processamento atencional enviesado frente a expressões faciais torna-se relevante para ajudar compreender a psicopatologia e dar foco em intervenções clínicas. Objetivo: Investigar VA em faces emocionais em pessoas com TPB na tarefa dot-probe utilizando o eye tracking. Método: Participaram n=12 pessoas com funcionamento de TPB (grupo clínico) e n=13 com depressão (grupo controle-clínico) que responderam a uma tarefa de dot-probe com faces emocionais nos tempos de 250ms e 1000ms. Resultados: Houve diferenças no tempo de reação para a face emocional de raiva em 250ms, em que grupo clínico foi mais rápido para responder os ensaios do que grupo controle. Em relação ao eye tracking, houve diferenças de grupos, indicando que grupo controle olhou mais para os olhos das faces neutras do que o grupo clínico em ensaios incongruentes. Conclusões: Estudo sugere que há um VA para faces emocionais de raiva em pessoas com TPB em estágio de processamento automático. É sugerido intervenções terapêuticas específicas para TPB.