Adult processing of child emotional expressions: A meta-analysis of ERP studies.

Abstract

Numerous event-related potential (ERP) studies have examined adults’ neural responses to child emotional expressions to understand the neurobiological mechanisms contributing to caregiving. It is unclear, however, whether one emotion evokes an enhanced response across components, and whether this pattern differs based on parent status or other sample characteristics. This meta-analysis quantified adult responses to child emotional expressions at the N170 and the late positive potential (LPP) components. Cohen’s d reflected the difference between crying and neutral (CN), crying and laughing (CL), and laughing and neutral (LN) N170 and LPP amplitudes. Crying expressions elicited slightly enhanced N170 and LPP amplitudes relative to neutral and laughing expressions (N170 CN: k = 24, d = −0.09, p < 0.001; N170 CL: k = 30, d = −0.07, p = .004; LPP CN: k = 20, d = 0.12, p = .027; LPP CL: k = 27, d = 0.10, p < .001), and laughing expressions elicited slightly enhanced N170 amplitudes relative to neutral expressions (N170 LN: k = 21, d = −0.05, p = .02). Parental status, child age, risk factors for insensitive caregiving, and measurement characteristics moderated some effect sizes, with reference electrode emerging as the most consistent moderator. Results shed light on the typical pattern of neural response to child emotions and characteristics that may moderate this response.

Infants' neutral facial expressions elicit the strongest initial attentional bias in adults: Behavioral and electrophysiological evidence

“…First, from the emotional valence of expressions perspective, the N170 activation elicited by infant faces showed a trend of successive decreases for sad, neutral, and happy expressions. This larger N170 activation of infant sad expressions relative to infant neutral or happy expressions is consistent with the results of previous studies (Colasante et Fraedrich et al, 2010;Kuzava et al, 2019;Leyh et al, 2016) and the overall effect results of previous metaanalysis (Kuzava et al, 2020). This indicates the special importance of focal perception and attention elicited by infants' distress in their survival and development (Hahn-Holbrook et al, 2011).…”

“…First, from the emotional valence of expressions perspective, the LPP activation elicited by both infant and adult faces showed a trend of successive decreases for happy, sad, and neutral facial expressions. Such findings of infant faces are consistent with the same trend of LPP activation attenuated to a distress profile (Kuzava et al, 2019) and partly consistent with the previous metaanalysis revealing a slightly larger LPP activation to crying relative to neutral expressions (Kuzava et al, 2020). Such findings of adult faces added neutral expressions to compare with emotional expressions, which extended the previous studies revealing a nonsignificant main effect of adults' emotional expressions (only including happy and sad) for the LPP activation (Colasante et al, 2017;Peltola et al, 2018).…”

“…Additionally, another finding, exclusive N170 activation regarding sad expressions, was perceived by females more than by males in the left hemisphere, demonstrating that women are more sensitive to infants' negative emotional states than men, consistent with previous studies (Colasante et al, 2017;Parsons et al, 2021). Therefore, infant negative expressions elicited stronger exclusive N170 activation than infant neutral or positive expressions; these findings provide precise evidence for the same overall effect results of a previous meta-analysis (Kuzava et al, 2020) after eliminating the interference of general face recognition. However, it is worth noting that in this preliminary emotion evaluation stage, exclusive neural sensitivity to infant faces only occurs in sad expressions, not in neutral and happy expressions.…”

“…Based on the aforementioned speculation (Jia, Ding, et al., 2021), we infer that the rapid attention stage is related to the initial detection and preliminary evaluation of the uncertainty of infant neutral expressions, and the prolonged attention stage is associated with the elaborate appraisal of this uncertainty. Based on the relevant ERP studies (Brosch et al., 2008; Hinojosa et al., 2015; Kuzava et al., 2020), we selected the P1 and N170 components to reflect initial detection and preliminary evaluation, respectively, in the rapid attention stage and infer that these two components, representing unconscious neural processing, would induce a consistent activation pattern. Meanwhile, we selected the LPP component to reflect the elaborate appraisal in the prolonged attention stage and infer that this component, representing conscious neural processing, would induce an activation pattern differing from those of the first two.…”

Resilience Coping in Preschool Children: The Role of Emotional Ability, Age, and Gender

“…In the health field of China’s “Learning and Development Guide for Children Aged 3–6”, it is suggested that parents and teachers help children learn to express and adjust their emotions correctly, and give appropriate guidance so that children can express their emotions [ 4 ]. Emotion is the internal development of a person’s whole life and plays an important role in personal growth [ 5 ], which will not only produce different emotions when getting along with their families, peers, and teachers [ 6 ] but also need to learn to express and adjust their emotions and understand the others’ emotions in adverse circumstances [ 7 , 8 ]. However, people’s performance in the face of disadvantage varies greatly [ 9 ]: some people choose to face setbacks bravely, but some people feel frustrated.…”