Attention to Faces Expressing Negative Emotion at 7 Months Predicts Attachment Security at 14 Months

Abstract

To investigate potential infant‐related antecedents characterizing later attachment security, this study tested whether attention to facial expressions, assessed with an eye‐tracking paradigm at 7 months of age (N = 73), predicted infant–mother attachment in the Strange Situation Procedure at 14 months. Attention to fearful faces at 7 months predicted attachment security, with a smaller attentional bias to fearful expressions associated with insecure attachment. Attachment disorganization in particular was linked to an absence of the age‐typical attentional bias to fear. These data provide the first evidence linking infants' attentional bias to negative facial expressions with attachment formation and suggest reduced sensitivity to facial expressions of negative emotion as a testable trait that could link attachment disorganization with later behavioral outcomes.

Evidence for spared attention to faces in 7-month-old infants after prenatal exposure to antiepileptic drugs

“…Given that the test task performance was technically successful and very comparative with many previous studies [40,43], the lack of differences cannot be attributed to methodological issues in test administration. Furthermore, earlier work has shown that the eye-tracking-based method is sensitive enough to measure clinically subtle effects such as single nucleotide gene polymorphisms or preterm birth; both were shown to affect eye-tracking-based measures [62][63][64].…”

“…The eye-tracking test was designed to assess infants' attention to nonface patterns and faces by using a face-distractor competition paradigm [31,40]. In this paradigm, infants fixate a nonface pattern or a picture of a face in the center of the screen while a lateral distractor stimulus (geometric shape) is presented to the left or to the right.…”

“…The order of the central stimulus (a nonface pattern or one of the three faces) and the side of the peripheral stimulus varied randomly with the exception that the same face was presented no more than twice in a row, and the target was no more than three times in a row shown on the same side of the screen. The test has been described in further detail in a previous report [31,40].…”

“…Reduced attentional bias for faces has been found in children with behavioral problems or autism [40,53,54].…”

“…For instance, speed of visuospatial orienting at 3.5 or 7 months of age will predict cognitive and academic performance at the age of 4 and 11 years [38,39]. Similarly, tests assessing infants' attentional bias for faces at 7 months predict socioemotional development at the age of 14 months [40], and reduced face preference is associated with later autism spectrum disorders [41][42][43][44][45][46] and atypical development [47]. Compared with traditional observational methods, eye-tracking-based testing of infants allows for completed automatization of the test procedure, as well as accurate, transparent physiological metrics of the sensory and cognitive processes in infants [33,47,48].…”