Poster #204 - Age and Temperament Moderate Attentional Vigilance to Faces in Infants: Evidence from an Eye-tracking Study

• In Event: 1-115 - Poster Session 03
  In Poster Session: PS 03 Section - Social, Emotional, Personality

Integrative Statement

Normative attention bias towards putative threat is early-emerging, and can be manifested as facilitated visual engagement towards threat (e.g. LoBue & DeLoache, 2010). Temperamental negative affect (NA) is associated with increased threat-related attention bias (Nakagawa & Sukigara, 2012). While orienting in infancy is relatively automatic, it overlaps with the executive network underlying temperamental effortful control (Cuevas & Bell, 2014), regulating threat-related attention (Martinos, Matheson, & de Haan, 2012). As attention control (AC) becomes more efficient through development, it plays an increasingly influential role in modulating automatic orienting (Posner et al., 2014).

The present study leverages a novel eye-tracking paradigm to study the effect of age and temperament on vigilance to faces varying in valence (emotional vs. neutral).

Participants were 259 infants (144 males; 4-24 months, Mage=11.28, SDage=5.74). A fixation video was followed by a face (neutral, angry, or happy with randomized orders) presented in one (randomized) corner of the screen until a 100ms fixation was detected (4000ms if no fixation; 45 trials; 4000ms ITIs). We examined latency of the first fixation to the face. We coded NA in a reactivity paradigm (Fox et al., 2015) or Laboratory Temperament Assessment Battery (Buss & Goldsmith, 2000) based on age. Mothers rated infant AC using either the Infant Behavior Questionnaire (Garstein & Rothbart, 2003) or the Toddler Behavior Assessment Questionnaire (Goldsmith, 1996).

A linear mixed-effects model revealed that (controlling for number of face fixations, sex, and gestational age at birth), there was a significant Age×Valence×NA×AC effect, F(1, 139)=5.41, p=.02 (Figure 1). To probe the interaction, each continuous moderating variable (Age, NA, and AC) was recentered at low (-1SD) and high (+1SD) levels (Aiken & West, 1991). The Age×Valence×AC effect was significant at high levels of NA, F(1, 139)= 7.13, p=.01, but not at low levels of NA, p=.70. At high levels of NA, the Age-by-Valence interaction was significant at high AC, F(1, 139)= 10.81, p=.001, but not at low AC, p=.65. Among infants with high NA and high AC, fixation latency to neutral faces significantly decreased as age increased, b=-.03, t(136)= -2.24, p=.03. The effect of Age was not significant for emotional faces, p=.71. The effect of Valence was significant only for older infants with high NA and high AC, F(1, 139)= 7.75, p=.01, such that they fixated to neutral faces significantly faster than emotional faces, b=-.21, t(139)= -2.78, p=.01. The effect of Valence was not significant for younger infants with these temperamental traits, p=.06.

In order to show differentiation in fixation latency to neutral versus emotional faces, infants would need to covertly attend to the face presentation. Infants have limited encounters with neutral faces in their rearing environments. Hence, neutral faces might be more novel and ambiguous compare to emotional faces. Infants with high NA tend to show attention bias toward faces displaying putative threat (Nakagawa & Sukigara, 2012). As AC develops over the course of infancy, older infants with high NA may become better at controlling their attention orienting, and thus display greater attention vigilance to neutral relative to emotional faces.

Authors

• Xiaoxue Fu, The Pennsylvania State University
  Presenting Author

• Santiago Morales, University of Maryland
  Non-Presenting Author

• Vanessa LoBue, Rutgers University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Kristin A Buss, The Pennsylvania State University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Koraly Pérez-Edgar, The Pennsylvania State University
  Non-Presenting Author