Developmental Precursors of Social Brain Networks: The Emergence of Attentional and Cortical Sensitivity to Facial Expressions in 5 to 7 Months Old Infants

Abstract

Biases in attention towards facial cues during infancy may have an important role in the development of social brain networks. The current study used a longitudinal design to examine the stability of infants' attentional biases towards facial expressions and to elucidate how these biases relate to emerging cortical sensitivity to facial expressions. Event-related potential (ERP) and attention disengagement data were acquired in response to the presentation of fearful, happy, neutral, and phase-scrambled face stimuli from the same infants at 5 and 7 months of age. The tendency to disengage from faces was highly consistent across both ages. However, the modulation of this behavior by fearful facial expressions was uncorrelated between 5 and 7 months. In the ERP data, fear-sensitive activity was observed over posterior scalp regions, starting at the latency of the N290 wave. The scalp distribution of this sensitivity to fear in ERPs was dissociable from the topography of face-sensitive modulation within the same latency range. While attentional bias scores were independent of co-registered ERPs, attention bias towards fearful faces at 5 months of age predicted the fear-sensitivity in ERPs at 7 months of age. The current results suggest that the attention bias towards fear could be involved in the developmental tuning of cortical networks for social signals of emotion.

Maternal and infant characteristics connected to shared pleasure in dyadic interaction

“…The purpose of the study and the methods used for collecting the data were explained to the participants who met the inclusion criteria. After answering any of the parent's questions and following the parent's decision to participate, the researcher scheduled an appointment and sent appropriate instructions regarding the laboratory visit for the neurocognitive testing of the infant at 5 and 7 months of age (Forssman et al., ; Peltola, Forssman, Puura, van IJzendoorn, & Leppänen, ; Yrttiaho, Forssman, Kaatiala, & Leppänen, ). Written informed consent was obtained during the first visit.…”

Maternal Depressive Symptoms During the Pre‐ and Postnatal Periods and Infant Attention to Emotional Faces

“…The central stimulus was presented until the end of each trial (4,000 ms), overlapping in time with the distractor. (Figure reproduced from Yrttiaho, Forssman, Kaatiala, & Leppänen, , https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0100811.g001 under the terms of the creative commons attribute license. )…”

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

“…The face and control stimuli measured 15° and 11° vertically and horizontally, respectively. The session started with the placement of an electrode net for recording electroencephalography (for these data, see Yrttiaho, Forssman, Kaatiala, & Leppänen, ). During the experiment, the infants sat on their parent's lap at a 60‐cm viewing distance from a corneal‐reflection eye‐tracker monitor with a 58‐cm diameter (Tobii TX300; Tobii Technology, Stockholm, Sweden), which recorded data on infants' eye positions on the screen with a 300‐Hz sampling rate.…”