Disorder in the environment moderates the relation between infant temperament and visual attention to threatening faces

• In Event: 1-172 - Examining the Effects of Temperament and Parenting on Early Risks for Anxiety within the Context of Environmental Risks

Integrative Statement

There is a large body of research linking infant temperament and attention to emotional faces (Perez-Edgar et al., 2010). Although some previous research links temperamental profiles high in negative affect to rapid attention to negative threatening facial expressions, other studies suggest that rapid attention to threat is normative across infants of various temperaments (see LoBue & Rakison, 2013 for a review). Importantly, most, if not all, of the published data on attention bias to threat comes from samples that are relatively homogenous on factors related to SES, leaving us with little understanding of the environmental impact on the link between temperament and attention to threatening faces. Factors related to developing in a low SES environment, like being exposed to high levels of disorder and inconsistency, could have profound impacts on the development of attention to threat.

Here we investigated the moderating impact that high levels of environmental disorder—a factor highly characteristic of low SES families—can have on the relation between temperament and 4-month-old infants’ (N=55, data collection ongoing) visual attention to threatening faces. Data are being collected longitudinally from two sites, disparate for SES and neighborhood-based stress—rural State College, PA, and urban Newark, NJ (data collection is ongoing). Emotional processing was measured in a passive viewing infant visual search task, where infants were presented with various faces (neutral, happy, angry) one at a time, each appearing in one of the four corners of a screen. We used eye tracking to measure infants’ latency to fixate on each face. Temperament was measured using the Infant Behavior Questionnaire (IBQ) (Putnam et al., 2014) and level of environmental disorder was measuring using the ICPSR Community Survey Questionnaire (Earls et al., 2013) (both parent report).

Results suggest that disorder in the environment is a significant moderator of the relation between positive aspects of infant temperament (i.e., smiling subscale) and visual attention to angry faces. For low and average levels of disorder, there was a significant relation between temperament and attention to angry faces (b=-165.6, t(55)=-3.12, p=.01; b=-134.9, t(55)=-2.88, p=.01, respectively). In environments with high levels of disorder, there is no significant relation between infant temperament and looking behavior (b=-71.59, t(55)=-1.46, p=.15).

These results demonstrate that infants with positive temperaments are faster to detect angry faces in the visual search task. This was not the case for infants coming from a highly-disordered environment: These infants show no relation between temperament and attention to the emotional faces. Our findings suggest that developing with high levels of environmental disorder may modify the developing link between attention and temperament—a link that has been shown to be important for psychosocial development. These findings highlight the important role that environmental factors related to SES might play across infant development.

Authors

• Jessica L. Burris, Rutgers University
  Presenting Author

• Denise Oleas, Rutgers University
  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