Temperamental Fear, Eye Contact, and Gaze Aversion in Early Infancy

• In Event: Poster Session 05
  In Poster Session: PS 05 Topic - Social, Emotional, Personality

Abstract

Eye contact is fundamental to social development. Yet infants vary in their amounts of eye contact and may avert their gaze away from people to regulate their arousal (Field, 1981). Temperamental fear—a heritable, early-emerging biological and behavioral tendency in infants’ responses to novel or intense stimuli—is theorized to be associated with infants’ social attention (Goldsmith, 1996; Rothbart, 1981). More specifically, infants’ physiological and behavioral patterns of social attention may reveal two components of temperamental fear—reactivity and self-regulation. Infants with higher levels of temperamental fear tend to be more reactive to novel stimulation and tend to have poorer self-regulation (e.g., gaze aversion; Rothbart et al., 1992). However, the associations between temperamental fear and the physiological and behavioral differences in infants’ social attention to a stranger remain unexplored, as do the developmental changes in the association between temperamental fear and physiological and behavioral indices in the first year after birth. These associations will help us understand early developmental changes in infants’ reactivity and self-regulation during social interactions which may predict later behavioral inhibition and emotion regulation (Calkins & Fox, 1992; Penela et al., 2015; Sanson et al., 2004).

Infants (N=123; 44% females; 58% Hispanic/Latino; 67% White, 16% Black, 12% multi-racial, 5% other/unknown races) watched a dynamic, 12.5 second, silent video of a smiling stranger (Figure 1), designed to simulate a naturalistic interaction. We measured infants’ visual attention (i.e., looks at the stranger’s eyes and gaze aversions from the stranger’s face) and pupil dilation before their first gaze aversion from the stranger’s face, at 2, 4, 6, and 8 months of age. During each visit, parents reported their infants’ temperamental fear with the Infant Behavior Questionnaire (Rothbart, 1981).

We analyzed infants’ look durations to the stranger’s eyes using a 3-level mixed effects model (Level-1: look index; Level-2: lab visit at each age; Level-3: infant) with temperamental fear and age as predictors. We found that infants’ look durations to the eyes were positively associated with their levels of temperamental fear (Figure 2a).

We analyzed the linear and quadratic temporal patterns of pupil dilation during the stranger interaction using a 3-level mixed effects model (Level-1: time from looking to the face to gaze aversion; Level-2: lab visit at each age; Level-3: infant) with temperamental fear and age as predictors. Infants with higher temperamental fear had greater pupil dilation from 2 to 6 months (Figure 2a), but temperamental fear and age interacted in relation to the linear and quadratic temporal patterns over the video time-course (Figure 2b).

Together, our findings suggest that, during interactions with strangers, infants higher in temperamental fear may have longer eye contact, greater arousal, and a developmental delay in using gaze aversion to regulate their arousal from 2 to 6 months. This apparent delay appears to improve by 8 months. Social attention and arousal levels during interactions with strangers may reflect individual differences and developmental changes in infants’ reactivity and self-regulation. Future research should investigate whether these early individual differences predict long-term developmental outcomes.

Authors

• Guangyu Zeng, University of Miami
  Presenting Author

• Sarah E. Maylott, Duke Univeristy
  Non-Presenting Author

• Tiffany S. Leung, University of Miami
  Non-Presenting Author

• Daniel Messinger, University of Miami
  Non-Presenting Author

• Jue Wang, University of Miami
  Non-Presenting Author

• Elizabeth A. Simpson, University of Miami
  Non-Presenting Author