Poster #3 - Maternal Anxiety and Visual Hemispheric Specialization During Infancy

• In Event: Poster Session 17

Abstract

Background: Prioritized processing of salient and biologically relevant information shapes functional specialization throughout early development. Previous work (Lasch & Elison, 2021; 2022) has established that visual attentional orienting biases (AOB) is present as early as 4 months, with fear specific bias observable by 11 months. However, the right hemisphere’s early specialization in visual perception may impact AOB between visual fields. Additionally, while early associations between anxiety and attentional biases in caregivers and infants have been established (e.g., Aktar et al., 2019; 2021), no work has examined these associations when measuring AOB with rapid stimuli presentations (i.e., 24 ms).

We examined how maternal anxiety (MA) affects infant AOB. We separated analyses by 1) competing cue combinations; and 2) visual field directions. Interactions between anxiety and either congruent or incongruent response latencies (RL’s) verified if MA’s association with AOB is due to facilitation (orienting quickly in congruent) or orienting cost (orienting slowly in incongruent).

Methods: Infants (n=103) completed an eye-tracking task at 1-4 visits at 3-35 months (sd=8.1), for a total of 150 visits. In this spatial cuing task variant, competing cues are briefly presented (24 ms) within the parafoveal visual field, then backward masked (126 ms) prior to a peripheral target. Facilitation and cost due to cue-target congruent/incongruent combinations are captured via eye tracking (Tobii TX 300). Stimuli combinations included 1) fearful face and a gaussian-filtered ‘scrambled’ version of the fearful face; and 2) fearful face and the same fearful face inverted. Infant AOB was calculated as the difference between RL in incongruent and congruent trials. Mean RL in ‘catch trials’ (fear cue in both sides of parafoveal field) was a control in all regressions as a measure of baseline RL to social stimuli. To quantify trait MA, mothers completed the State Trait Anxiety Inventory (Spielberger, 1989) within 30 days of infant eye tracking.

Results: When fear faces competed with scrambled fear, more variance in AOB was explained with incongruent RL than congruent in both visual fields (R2= .49-.71 vs .11-.35), suggesting that AOB is more related to orienting cost to fear stimuli, not orienting facilitation.

MA moderated the effect of incongruent RL on left AOB (b=-2.44, p<.001), such that infants with less anxious mothers showed greater associations between incongruent RL and AOB. MA did not moderate the effect of RL’s on AOB in the right visual field (p’s= .28-.3).

When fear faces competed with inverted fear, variance was more equally explained by incongruent and congruent RL models (R2=.37-.54 vs. .13-.40), suggesting more equal contribution of orienting cost and facilitation to infant AOB.
Unlike in scrambled presentation, MA moderated the effect of congruent RL (b=-.03, p=.004) on left AOB, but not incongruent RL (p=.43). In the right visual field, congruent RL was marginally moderated by MA (b=-.02, p=.08), but incongruent RL was not (p=.22).

MA is associated with infant AOB, but associations are sensitive to types of competing stimuli, even when briefly presented. Effects are more readily identifiable in left visual field, possibly due to right hemisphere’s specialization in visual perception.

Authors

• Carolyn Lasch, University of Minnesota - Twin Cities
  Presenting Author

• Colleen Doyle, University of Minnesota - Twin Cities

• Megan R. Gunnar, University of Minnesota - Twin Cities

• Jed T. Elison, University of Minnesota - Twin Cities