The Influence of Cognitive Load on Empathy and Intention in Response to Infant Crying

Abstract

Many studies have explored risk factors for child maltreatment, but little research has focused on situational risk factors such as cognitive load, which involves within-individual fluctuation. The current study sought to determine whether cognitive load led to within-individual changes in intention in response to infant crying. The study also sought to ascertain whether state empathy, empathic concern (EC), and personal distress mediated or moderated this relationship. Sixty-six participants completed a memory task (remembering meaningless, two- or eight-letter, English alphabet string), during which they were required to keep these letters in mind while hearing infant crying (or a tone). Subsequently, participants rated questions concerning state empathy and intention in response to the crying (i.e., intentions involving caregiving, neglect, or physical abuse). Results showed that cognitive load reduced caregiving intention and increased intention to perpetrate neglect. In addition, EC mediated the relationship between cognitive load and intention to provide care or perpetrate neglect. Moreover, cognitive load interacted with state empathy to predict intention to provide care or perpetrate neglect. These findings highlighted the importance of focusing on situational cognitive risk factors for child maltreatment and elucidated the role of state empathy as a mediator or moderator in child maltreatment research.

The influence of cognitive load on maternal postural sway and heart rate in response to infant vocalizations

“…To manipulate cognitive load, participants were asked to memorize a meaningless alphabet string. This procedure has been used in previous research (Hiraoka & Nomura, , ). Before the presentation of each sound, a string of letters was presented on the PC display for 5 s. After the sound presentation, participants were asked to recall the meaningless alphabets string using the keyboard while remaining on the balance board.…”

“…After each sound presentation, participants were asked to rate their empathic feelings (empathic concern and personal distress) for each infants’ voice stimulus on a Likert scale ranging from 1 to 7. Both of these emotions are aspects of emotional empathy, but empathic concern (EC) has been shown to positively predict intention to provide care (Lin & McFatter, ), while personal distress (PD) has been shown to predict both intentions to provide care and to perpetrate neglect (Hiraoka & Nomura, ). Each question type had one item (EC: “I felt concerned for the baby”; PD: “The longer I listened to the crying, the more helpless and frustrated I felt”).…”

“…Deater‐Deckard, Sewell, Petrill, and Thompson () found that negative reactions toward children was more predominant among mothers with poor working memory. In fact, previous studies have shown that empathy for crying infants decreases under high cognitive load (Hiraoka & Nomura, , ). These observations are supported by studies showing a reduction in neural areas involved in cognitive empathy control and executive function when participants experienced cognitive load while viewing others in distress (Rameson, Morelli, & Lieberman, ; Spunt & Lieberman, ).…”

“…To this end, we conducted an experiment where mothers listened to infant vocalizations. Prior to the presentation of sound stimuli, participants were asked to memorize some alphabet characters as a manipulation for cognitive load (Hiraoka & Nomura, ; Maehara & Saito, ). We set up the following hypotheses.…”

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“…In terms of RAC and physical restraint, carers can at once know that physical restraint is ineffective but may choose this as an intervention at a given time. In addition, these affective processes can also impede empathy [24].…”