Looking to the eyes influences the processing of emotion on face‐sensitive event‐related potentials in 7‐month‐old infants

Abstract

Previous studies in infants have shown that face-sensitive components of the ongoing EEG (the event-related potential, or ERP) are larger in amplitude to negative emotions (e.g., fear, anger) versus positive emotions (e.g., happy). However, it is still unclear whether the negative emotions linked with the face or the negative emotions alone contribute to these amplitude differences. We simultaneously recorded infant looking behaviors (via eye-tracking) and face-sensitive ERPs while 7-month-old infants viewed human faces or animals displaying happy, fear, or angry expressions. We observed that the amplitude of the N290 was greater (i.e., more negative) to angry animals compared to happy or fearful animals; no such differences were obtained for human faces. Eye-tracking data highlighted the importance of the eye region in processing emotional human faces. Infants that spent more time looking to the eye region of human faces showing fearful or angry expressions had greater N290 or P400 amplitudes, respectively.

Emotion in motion: Facial dynamics affect infants' neural processing of emotions

“…Indeed, previous electrophysiological investigations typically used a maximum of two identities to represent each emotional expression. Similarly to Vanderwert and colleagues (), who reported a lack of modulation of latency and amplitude values at the level of the N290 and P400, the use of multiple identities expressing the emotions might have increased task demands, rendering difficult for 7‐month‐old infants to fully categorize the three different facial expressions.…”

“…In the current study, the use of a large number of identities (i.e., nine), and the absence of identity overlap across emotional conditions, provided a more rigorous test of infants' neural sensitivity to emotional expressions, as their ability to process and differentiate among emotional expressions is tested over perceptual differences linked to identity variation. At the same time, though, this methodological choice might have increased task demands, and thus prevent infants to fully categorize the three different emotions (see Vanderwert et al, for a similar argument). This methodological difference may have contributed to the inconsistencies between current and previous results.…”

“…Several ERP studies have consistently shown that, in 7‐month‐old infants, the Negative Central (Nc) component, a negative deflection occurring over fronto‐central electrode sites reflecting allocation of attentional processing resources (Dennis, Malone, & Chen, ; de Haan, Johnson, & Halit, ), is enhanced in response to fearful faces as compared to happy ones (Leppänen, Moulson, Vogel‐Farley, & Nelson, ; Nelson & de Haan, ). Existing studies have also shown that facial emotional expressions modulate occipito‐temporal cortical responses at the level of the P400 (e.g., Leppanen et al, ; Vanderwert et al, ), a face‐sensitive ERP component which, together with the N290, is thought to be the infant precursor to the adult N170 (see de Haan et al, ). The P400 was found to be larger for fearful faces compared to happy and neutral ones (Leppänen et al, ), and also compared to angry faces (Kobiella, Grossmann, Reid, & Striano, ).…”

Plasticity may change inputs as well as processes, structures, and responses

“…More directly relevant, Amso et al (2010) found that how infants scanned faces during habituation predicted whether they distinguished between faces of different emotional expressions. Similarly, in a different procedure Vanderwert et al (2015) found that 7-month-old infants’ looking at the eyes of emotional expressions was related to their processing of those faces. Finally, young infants’ learning about cat and dog stimuli is refelcts an interaction between their attentional strategy and previous pet experience (Kovack-Lesh et al, 2008, 2012; Markant & Amso, 2016).…”

Eye-Tracking in the Study of Visual Expertise: Methodology and Approaches in Medicine

“…It is likely that this technique is employed by medical experts | F L R 48 who have significant experience with the visual characteristics of a diagnostic entity. Experts in these fields may describe recognizing an image like one does an acquaintance, which implies visual processing that may be similar to face processing -a visual task long studied with eye-tracking methodology (Gauthier & Nelson, 2001;Pascalis et al, 2005;Vanderwert et al, 2015;Wagner, Hirsch, Vogel-Farley, Redcay, & Nelson, 2013).…”