Infant emotional responses to challenge predict empathic behavior in toddlerhood

Abstract

Although emotional responses are theorized to be important in the development of empathy, findings regarding the prediction of early empathic behavior by infant behavioral and physiological responses are mixed. This study examined whether behavioral and physiological responses to mild emotional challenge (still face paradigm and car seat task) in 118 infants at age 6 months predicted empathic distress and empathic concern in response to an empathy‐evoking task (i.e, experimenter's distress simulation) at age 20 months. Correlation analyses, corrected for sex and baseline levels of physiological arousal, showed that stronger physiological and behavioral responses to emotional challenge at age 6 months were positively related to observed empathic distress, but not empathic concern, at age 20 months. Linear regression analyses indicated that physiological and behavioral responses to challenge at 6 months independently predicted empathic distress at 20 months, which suggests an important role for both physiological and behavioral emotional responses in empathy development. In addition, curvilinear regression analyses showed quadratic associations between behavioral responses at 6 months, and empathic distress and empathic concern at 20 months, which indicates that moderate levels of behavioral responsivity predict the highest levels of empathic distress and empathic concern.

Physiological measurement of emotion from infancy to preschool: A systematic review and meta‐analysis

“… positive and negative affect during play with mother (Moore et al., 2009) mother engagement during play with mother (Ham & Tronick, 2009) positive affect during reunion (Busuito et al., 2019; Moore et al., 2009) distress during a barrier task (Calkins & Johnson, 1998b) distraction during a barrier task (Calkins & Johnson, 1998b) comfort seeking during still‐face task (Noten et al., 2019b) emotion regulation during a toy removal task …”

Associations between infant amygdala functional connectivity and social engagement following a stressor: A preliminary investigation

“…Infants are exposed to mild social stressors (e.g., temporary unavailability of caregivers) in daily life, and the ability to recover from such stressors and resume engagement is important in maintaining homeostasis and repairing disrupted social interactions (DiCorcia & Tronick, 2011). Over the first year of life, infants learn to regulate stress through infant–mother interaction (Calkins & Hill, 2007; Kopp, 1989), and early experiences of successful stress recovery are posited to accumulate into regulatory resilience (DiCorcia & Tronick, 2011) and contribute to subsequent adaptive socioemotional functioning, including higher social competence and fewer behavioral problems (e.g., Moore et al., 2001; Noten et al., 2020). Because mothers play a key role in infant stress regulation, an infant's ability to recover from a moderate stressor has been operationalized as the infant's social engagement with the mother following the stressor (e.g., Montirosso et al., 2010; Rosenblum et al., 2002).…”

Empathy in Preschoolers: Exploring Profiles and Age- and Gender-Related Differences

“…Such differences in age could lead authors to differing conclusions. In addition to these two methods of evaluation, some authors have conducted studies using physiological measures, such as pupillometry, heart rate, or skin conductance, e.g., [25][26][27], to assess empathy. Although this type of measure has several advantages for assessing empathy independently of cognitive and language skills and social desirability bias [26], some limitations must be considered in its use at preschool age.…”