The Emergence and Stability of the Attentional Bias to Fearful Faces in Infancy

Peltola, Mikko J.; Hietanen, Jari K.; Forssman, Linda; Leppänen, Jukka

doi:10.1111/infa.12013

Cited by 133 publications

(130 citation statements)

References 48 publications

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“…This increased attention to fear in others is in line with prior behavioral and neuroscience work with infants of that age (3,(62)(63)(64)(65)69). Enhanced attention to fear has been argued to serve important adaptive functions because it is thought to alert the individual to potential dangers and threats in the environment (69). Interestingly, although fearful and angry faces both represent negative expressions that might be associated with threat, our results show that infants dedicate more attention to fearful eyes than angry eyes.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 88%

Genetic variation in CD38 and breastfeeding experience interact to impact infants’ attention to social eye cues

Krol

Monakhov

Lai

et al. 2015

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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Attending to emotional information conveyed by the eyes is an important social skill in humans. The current study examined this skill in early development by measuring attention to eyes while viewing emotional faces in 7-mo-old infants. In particular, we investigated individual differences in infant attention to eyes in the context of genetic variation (CD38 rs3796863 polymorphism) and experiential variation (exclusive breastfeeding duration) related to the oxytocin system. Our results revealed that, whereas infants at this age show a robust fear bias (increased attention to fearful eyes), their attention to angry and happy eyes varies as a function of exclusive breastfeeding experience and genetic variation in CD38. Specifically, extended exclusive breastfeeding duration selectively enhanced looking preference to happy eyes and decreased looking to angry eyes. Importantly, however, this interaction was impacted by CD38 variation, such that only the looking preferences of infants homozygous for the C allele of rs3796863 were affected by breastfeeding experience. This genotype has been associated with reduced release of oxytocin and higher rates of autism. In contrast, infants with the CA/AA genotype showed similar looking preferences regardless of breastfeeding exposure. Thus, differences in the sensitivity to emotional eyes may be linked to an interaction between the endogenous (CD38) and exogenous (breastfeeding) availability of oxytocin. These findings underline the importance of maternal care and the oxytocin system in contributing to the early development of responding to social eye cues.CD38 | oxytocin | breastfeeding | emotion perception | infancy S ensitive responding to emotions in others is a vital social skill that helps us relate to others, predict their actions, and coordinate our own behavior during social interactions. Given its critical importance for effective social functioning, it is not surprising that the ability to detect and distinguish between emotional expressions emerges early in human development. Findings from behavioral and neuroscience studies indicate that infants' ability to discriminate between positive and negative emotional expressions emerges in the first year of life (see refs. 1 and 2 for reviews). For example, by around 7 mo of age, infants distinguish between fearful and happy facial expressions and show increased allocation of attention to fear (3). This enhanced attention to fear in others marks the emergence of a "fear bias" in infancy, which is thought to orient and alert the infant to potentially threatening situations (2, 4). Prior work with adults demonstrates that emotion perception and, in particular, fear detection (eyes wide open) rely heavily on information from the eye region and occur even in the absence of conscious perception (5-8).The importance of eye cues for emotion perception has recently been studied in infants. In an event-related brain potential (ERP) study, 7-mo-old infants were found to discriminate between fear and happiness on the basis of eye c...

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 88%

Genetic variation in CD38 and breastfeeding experience interact to impact infants’ attention to social eye cues

Krol

Monakhov

Lai

et al. 2015

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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“…With regard to the current findings, it is important to mention that infants' sensitivity to emotional facial expressions is in place by 7 months of age. Specifically, 7-month-old infants, but not 5-month-old infants, have been shown to discriminate between different emotional facial expressions and show an attentional bias for fearful facial expressions (Jessen & Grossmann, 2016;Peltola, Hietanen, Forssman, & Leppänen, 2013;Peltola et al, 2009). These studies show that this fear bias can be observed in infants' looking time and in their ERP responses.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 70%

“…These studies show that this fear bias can be observed in infants' looking time and in their ERP responses. More specifically, 7-month-old infants look longer at fearful compared with happy faces (Peltola et al, 2009) and are slower to disengage attention from fearful faces compared with happy faces or nonemotional novel facial expressions (Peltola et al, 2013;Peltola, Leppanen, Palokangas, & Hietanen, 2008). At the neural level, the Nc has been shown to distinguish between positive (happy) and negative (fearful) facial expressions with a larger amplitude to fear, indexing a greater allocation of attention ( Jessen & Grossmann, 2015;Peltola et al, 2009).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Neural and Behavioral Evidence for Infants' Sensitivity to the Trustworthiness of Faces

Jessen

Großmann

2016

Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience

109

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Face evaluation is a key aspect of face processing in humans, serving important functions in regulating social interactions. Adults and preschool children readily evaluate faces with respect to a person's trustworthiness and dominance. However, it is unclear whether face evaluation is mainly a product of extensive learning or a foundational building block of face perception already during infancy. We examined infants' sensitivity to facial signs of trustworthiness (Experiment 1) and dominance (Experiment 2) by measuring ERPs and looking behavior in response to faces that varied with respect to the two facial attributes. Results revealed that 7-month-old infants are sensitive to facial signs of trustworthiness but not dominance. This sensitivity was reflected in infants' behavioral preference and in the modulation of brain responses previously linked to emotion detection from faces. These findings provide first evidence that processing faces with respect to trustworthiness has its origins in infancy and shed light on the behavioral and neural correlates of this early emerging sensitivity.

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“…However, it is not until the age of 7 mo that they show a robust attentional bias to fear, as reflected in their neural and behavioral responses (37)(38)(39)(40)(41). The developmental emergence of this fear bias has been linked to the maturation of frontolimbic circuits (42)(43)(44)(45) and occurs at a point in development when infants begin to first experience fear themselves (46,47).…”

Section: Significancementioning

confidence: 99%

Unconscious discrimination of social cues from eye whites in infants

Jessen

Großmann

2014

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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Human eyes serve two key functions in face-to-face social interactions: they provide cues about a person's emotional state and attentional focus (gaze direction). Both functions critically rely on the morphologically unique human sclera and have been shown to operate even in the absence of conscious awareness in adults. However, it is not known whether the ability to respond to social cues from scleral information without conscious awareness exists early in human ontogeny and can therefore be considered a foundational feature of human social functioning. In the current study, we used event-related brain potentials (ERPs) to show that 7-mo-old infants discriminate between fearful and nonfearful eyes (experiment 1) and between direct and averted gaze (experiment 2), even when presented below the perceptual threshold. These effects were specific to the human sclera and not seen in response to polarityinverted eyes. Our results suggest that early in ontogeny the human brain detects social cues from scleral information even in the absence of conscious awareness. The current findings support the view that the human eye with its prominent sclera serves critical communicative functions during human social interactions.infancy | social perception | human eye | subliminal processing | emotion processing

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The Emergence and Stability of the Attentional Bias to Fearful Faces in Infancy

Cited by 133 publications

References 48 publications

Genetic variation in CD38 and breastfeeding experience interact to impact infants’ attention to social eye cues

Genetic variation in CD38 and breastfeeding experience interact to impact infants’ attention to social eye cues

Neural and Behavioral Evidence for Infants' Sensitivity to the Trustworthiness of Faces

Unconscious discrimination of social cues from eye whites in infants

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