An eye tracking investigation of attentional biases towards affect in young children.

Burris, Jessica L.; Barry-Anwar, Ryan; Rivera, Susan M.

doi:10.1037/dev0000345

Cited by 40 publications

(68 citation statements)

References 40 publications

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“…Previous work using traditional means across conditions did not find a relation between dwell time (to 500 ms face presentation) and a bias score (incongruent minus congruent) calculated from fixation latencies (Burris et al, in press). In contrast, our within-trial analysis found an interaction between age, dwell time to angry faces, and negative affect in predicting latency to probes.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 82%

“…We did not find systematic sex-linked findings with our current sample and analytic strategy. It may be that larger samples, with alternate variables of interest (Burris et al, in press) or more fear-specific stimuli (e.g., spiders), are needed to reveal any emergent differences.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Although much of the dot-probe literature has focused on 500 ms face-presentation times (Bar-Haim et al, 2007; Burris et al, in press; Van Bockstaele et al, 2014), many studies have shortened or lengthened this time in order to capture variations in attention bias patterns (Mogg, Bradley, De Bono, & Painter, 1997). Given the infant sample in the current study, faces were presented for 1000 ms, providing sufficient time to capture eye-gaze patterns for even the youngest participants.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Eye-tracking may also help verify that a participant is (or is not) visually attending to the stimuli presumed to drive attention bias. Recent work examining eye-tracking in children ages nine- to forty-eight months in a dot-probe task suggests that the task shows positive internal reliability (Burris, Barry-Anwar, & Rivera, in press), particularly when compared to recent concerns regarding the behavioral RT version of the task (Rodebaugh et al, 2016)…”

Section: The Current Questions Of Interestmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 3 more Smart Citations

The impact of negative affect on attention patterns to threat across the first 2 years of life.

Pérez‐Edgar

Morales

LoBue

et al. 2017

Developmental Psychology

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The current study examined the relations between individual differences in attention to emotion faces and temperamental negative affect across the first two years of life. Infant studies have noted a normative pattern of preferential attention to salient cues, particularly angry faces. A parallel literature suggests that elevated attention bias to threat is associated with anxiety, particularly if coupled with temperamental risk. Examining the emerging relations between attention to threat and temperamental negative affect may help distinguish normative from at-risk patterns of attention. Infants (N=145) ages 4 to 24 months (Mean=12.93 months, SD=5.57) completed an eye-tracking task modeled on the attention bias “dot-probe” task used with older children and adults. With age, infants spent greater time attending to emotion faces, particularly threat faces. All infants displayed slower latencies to fixate to incongruent versus congruent probes. Neither relation was moderated by temperament. Trial-by-trial analyses found that dwell time to the face was associated with latency to orient to subsequent probes, moderated by the infant's age and temperament. In young infants low in negative affect longer processing of angry faces was associated with faster subsequent fixation to probes; young infants high in negative affect displayed the opposite pattern at trend. Findings suggest that although age was directly associated with an emerging bias to threat, the impact of processing threat on subsequent orienting was associated with age and temperament. Early patterns of attention may shape how children respond to their environments, potentially via attention's gate-keeping role in framing a child's social world for processing.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 82%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: The Current Questions Of Interestmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

The impact of negative affect on attention patterns to threat across the first 2 years of life.

Pérez‐Edgar

Morales

LoBue

et al. 2017

Developmental Psychology

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“…Furthermore, a related study found an age‐related increase in probe fixation latency after infants fixated face pairs containing an emotional face, but not after trials with nonsocial threats (e.g., snakes) (LoBue, Buss, Taber‐Thomas, & Pérez‐Edgar, ). However, other cross‐sectional eye‐tracking studies with infants have not found significant age effects for affect‐biased attention (Burris et al, , 9‐ to 48‐month‐olds; Morales et al, , 4‐ to 24‐month‐olds).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 89%

Temperament moderates developmental changes in vigilance to emotional faces in infants: Evidence from an eye‐tracking study

Morales

LoBue

et al. 2019

Developmental Psychobiology

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Affect‐biased attention reflects the prioritization of attention to stimuli that individuals deem to be motivationally and/or affectively salient. Normative affect‐biased attention is early‐emerging, providing an experience‐expectant function for socioemotional development. Evidence is limited regarding how reactive and regulatory aspects of temperament may shape maturational changes in affect‐biased attention that operate at the earliest stages of information processing. This study implemented a novel eye‐tracking paradigm designed to capture attention vigilance in infants. We assessed temperamental negative affect (NA) and attention control (AC) using laboratory observations and parent‐reports, respectively. Among infants (N = 161 in the final analysis) aged 4 to 24 months (Mean = 12.05, SD = 5.46; 86 males), there was a significant age effect on fixation latency to emotional versus neutral faces only in infants characterized with high NA and high AC. Specifically, in infants with these temperament traits, older infants showed shorter latency (i.e., greater vigilance) toward neutral faces, which are potentially novel and unfamiliar to infants. The age effect on vigilance toward emotional faces was not significant. The findings support the argument that the development of affect‐biased attention is associated with multiple temperament processes that potentially interact over time.

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Hyper‐focus, sticky attention, and springy attention in young autistic children: Associations with sensory behaviors and cognitive ability

Dwyer,

Sillas,

Prieto

et al. 2024

Autism Research

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The autistic‐developed monotropism account suggests that atypical, domain‐general attentional hyper‐focus on interests is a central aspect of autism, but domain‐general attention differences in autism can manifest differently. Prior research suggests autistic children are often slow to disengage attention from stimuli—a pattern often called “sticky attention”—and that they can show reduced novelty preference. These attentional patterns could influence sensory experiences and learning. We used eye‐tracking to investigate novelty preference and “sticky attention” in young autistic children; we also examined whether attentional patterns were related to cognitive abilities and caregiver‐reported sensory responsiveness. A total of 46 autistic and 28 nonautistic participants, aged between 2 and 4 years, provided usable data. We found no evidence that autistic children exhibited greater “sticky attention” than nonautistics, but “sticky attention” in autism was associated with more caregiver‐reported sensory hyper‐responsiveness, seeking/interests, and enhanced perception. Autistic children also nonsignificantly trended toward exhibiting reduced novelty preference. Unexpectedly, the time‐course of this trending novelty preference difference implied it was not driven by reduced orienting to novelty, but increased returning to already‐familiarized stimuli: what we call “springy attention.” Exploratory analyses of data from the attentional disengagement task suggest autistic participants may have exhibited greater “springy attention,” though further research with paradigms optimized for measuring this construct should confirm this. Importantly, “springy attention” was robustly related to reduced cognitive abilities and greater caregiver‐reported hypo‐responsiveness. Thus, this study illuminates two distinct domain‐general attentional patterns, each with distinct correlates in young autistic children, which could have important implications for understanding autistic children's learning, development, and experiences.

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An eye tracking investigation of attentional biases towards affect in young children.

Cited by 40 publications

References 40 publications

The impact of negative affect on attention patterns to threat across the first 2 years of life.

The impact of negative affect on attention patterns to threat across the first 2 years of life.

Temperament moderates developmental changes in vigilance to emotional faces in infants: Evidence from an eye‐tracking study

Hyper‐focus, sticky attention, and springy attention in young autistic children: Associations with sensory behaviors and cognitive ability

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