Negative Affectivity Predicts Affect-Biased Attention in Infancy

• In Event: Poster Session 14
  In Poster Session: PS 14 Topic - Attention, Learning, Memory

Abstract

Background: Biased attention towards affective cues plays an integral role in shaping the trajectory of socioemotional development over the lifespan. Attentional patterns in childhood and adulthood, such as heightened vigilance towards threatening emotional stimuli followed by subsequent avoidance (vigilance-avoidance), predict the emergence of anxiety and depressive disorders. However, very few studies have assessed whether these patterns of affect-biased attention relate to socioemotional development in infancy and have yielded mixed results. Objective: The current study evaluates whether negative affectivity, a key component of temperament, relates to affect-biased attention in 6-month-old infants. Method: Affect-biased attention was assessed via an eye tracking task in which infants are presented with 36 emotional face pairs. Face pairs were comprised of one emotional face (i.e., happy, angry, or sad) and a neutral face, and were displayed for 5 second durations. Infant looking patterns were quantified by the following metrics: time to first fixation (a metric of initial orienting or vigilance towards an emotional stimuli), and total looking time and proportion of total looking time on the emotional face in comparison to its neutral pair (both metrics of sustained attention). Negative affectivity was assessed via parent report on the Infant Behavior Questionnaire. Results: Overall, infants were quicker to fixate on angry faces than happy (t = 6.19, p < .001) or sad faces (t = -4.68, p < .001), but spent more total time looking at happy than sad faces over the course of the trial (t = 2.10, p = .039). Negative affectivity did not relate to time to first fixation but was associated with shorter total looking time on happy (r = -.24, p = .047), angry (r = -.23, p = .055), and sad faces (r = -.24, p = .045). Notably, negative affectivity was not associated with total looking time on screen, suggesting that infants high in negative affectivity were not less likely to attend to the task. Finally, negative affectivity was also associated with a lower proportion of looking time on angry faces in comparison to the neutral face pair (r = -.31, p = .098), but not for happy or sad faces. Discussion: Results suggest that negative affectivity does not predict heightened vigilance towards emotional faces, but rather subsequent avoidance of all emotional faces. Findings highlight the importance of assessing both initial orienting as well as sustained attention when exploring the attentional correlates of temperament, and could explain some of the inconsistencies in findings across prior studies. This work suggests that negative affectivity in infancy may shape the way infants explore emotional faces over time and could have important implications for later socioemotional outcomes.

Authors

• Danielle Swales, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
  Presenting Author

• Ella-Marie P. Hennessey, University of Denver
  Non-Presenting Author

• Özlü Aran, University of Denver
  Non-Presenting Author

• Benjamin Hankin, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
  Non-Presenting Author

• Elysia Davis, University of Denver
  Non-Presenting Author