Attention Biases to Threat in Infants and Parents: Links to Parental and Infant Anxiety Dispositions

• In Event: Advances in the Study of Parenting and Infant Emotional Development: Merging Modern and Traditional Measures

Abstract

Anxiety runs in families. Children of parents with (versus without) an anxiety disorder are two to three times more likely to develop an anxiety disorder (Telman, van Steensel, Maric, & Bögels, 2018). Despite this significant familial aggregation, little is known about the mechanisms responsible for parent-to-offspring anxiety transmission. Cognitive-behavioural approaches highlight the transmission of anxious information processing biases as a central mechanism responsible for anxiety transmission (Creswell et al., 2010). These approaches suggest that the overlap between parents’ and offspring anxiety is suggested to be at least partially accounted for by shared attention biases to threat. Currently, it remains yet unknown whether an overlap in attention biases of parents and the offspring is already observable in infancy. This study explored the direct link between infants’ and parents’ attention to threat-relevant (versus happy) expressions, and investigated the links between anxiety dispositions and attention biases to threat in infants and in their parent.

The infant sample consisted of 220 infants in three age groups: 5-to-7- month-olds (n = 73), 11-to-13-month-olds (n = 78), and 17-to-19-month-olds (n = 69). The parent who accompanied the infant to the lab also joined the experiment (n = 232, 74 fathers). Infants’ and parents’ dwell times to dynamic fearful and angry (versus happy) facial expressions were measured in an eye-tracking experiment. When available, both parents of the participating children filled in online questionnaires measuring anxiety dispositions in infants (temperamental dimensions of fear and distress to limitations) and in parents (anxiety and stress). Infants’ dwell times differed as a function of emotion, and age: Infants dwelled longer on fearful, β = .09, SE = .04, p < .027 than happy faces, whereas they dwelled shorter on angry, β = -.13, SE = .04, p = .002 versus happy faces. Twelve-month-olds (β = .44, SE = .15, p = .003) and 18-month-olds (β = .65, SE = .15, p < .001) showed longer dwell times to threat-relevant emotional expressions than 6-month-olds. In addition to a weak significant positive correlation between visiting parent’ report of own and infants’ anxiety dispositions (r = .16, p = .027), there was a direct positive link between infants’ and parents’ attention biases: Stronger attention biases to threat in infants were related to stronger biases to threat in their parent (F (1, 431.43) = 4.91, p = .027). However, visiting parents’ anxiety dispositions did not predict their own p = .811, nor their infants’ attention biases, p = .942. Likewise, no significant relationship was found between infants’ anxious temperamental dispositions and infants’ attention biases, p = .490.

The findings reveal a direct overlap between infants’ and parents’ attention to threat-relevant (versus happy) dynamic facial expressions as early as in the first 18-months of life. Given the lack of significant associations between anxiety dispositions and attention biases neither in parents, nor in infants, no support was found for the idea that the overlap between parents’ and offspring anxiety to be partially accounted for by shared attention biases.

Authors

• Evin Aktar, Leiden University
  Presenting Author

• Cosima Nimphy, Universiteit Leiden
  Non-Presenting Author

• Mariska E. Kret, Leiden University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Koraly Elisa Perez-Edgar, Pennsylvania State University, University Park
  Non-Presenting Author

• Maartje Raijmakers, University of Amsterdam
  Non-Presenting Author

• Susan Bögels, University of Amsterdam
  Non-Presenting Author