Poster #105 - Examining Infant Distress: Relationships with EEG Asymmetry and Moderations of Infant Sex

• In Event: Poster Session 06

Abstract

Infant distress reactions to stimuli are an important marker of development, with regulation behaviors varying based on emotion context, and maternal attachment quality (Leerkes & Wong, 2011). Frontal electroencephalograph (EEG) asymmetry has emerged as a prominent neurophysiological temperament correlate, with relative left activation reflecting approach/positive affectivity and relative right activation indicative of avoidance emotions/motivation (Coan & Allen, 2004; Davidson, 2001). However, EEG asymmetry during emotion-eliciting tasks has been underexplored, and the current study considered changes in infant frontal alpha asymmetry during a negative emotion-eliciting task relative to baseline, consistent with the capability model (Coan, Allen, & McKnight, 2006). Additionally, prior literature has indicated that frontal EEG asymmetry related effects may be sex-specific (Gartstein et al., 2014; Gartstein et al., 2020). The present study addresses an important gap in research by examining infant distress and regulation during a distress-eliciting/regulation-challenging task and their links to task-related EEG asymmetry changes, while examining variability in emotion lateralization as a function of infant sex.

Healthy infants aged 6-12 months (e.g., no medical or birth complications) participated (N=53). Infant distress was coded during a minute-long segment of the Toy Retraction Task (Lab-TAB; Goldsmith & Rothbart, 1996). Infants were coded for vocal distress, facial distress, and four areas of self-regulation (Reaching for mom, hand to mouth, self-touch, and table-banging). EEG was recorded at 16 left and right scalp sites during baseline (Baby Mozart video) and the Still Face Procedure (Tronick, Als, Adamson, Wise, & Brazelton, 1978), wherein the mother is instructed to refrain from speaking or affectively communicating with the infant. EEG power was computed for the 6 to 9 Hz frequency band (“infant and child alpha”; Bell & Fox, 1994), with asymmetry scores calculated by subtracting the natural log (ln) power at the left frontal (F3) site from ln power at the right frontal (F4), and higher values indicating relative left frontal activation (Reznik & Allen, 2018).

Factor analyses were performed to reduce the distress and regulation measures, with single factor solutions indicated by Principal Component results for each: Distress – vocal distress intensity, facial distress intensity, duration of vocal distress; duration of facial distress; Regulation - reaching for mom, reaching for toy, hand to mouth, self-touch, with factor loadings .41-.91 (mean=.71). Distress and regulation composites were subsequently computed, and their contribution, as well moderation by gender in predicting SFP asymmetry, were examined via hierarchical multiple regression analyses. Infant age was used as a covariate, also controlling for baseline asymmetry in order to address an emotion lateralization response to the stressful task. Interaction terms capturing infant sex moderation of distress and regulation behaviors were included. The regression equation predicting frontal SFP asymmetry revealed a significant interaction between total distress and infant sex (Table 1a), although regulation related analyses did not produce significant results (Table 1b). This significant interaction was plotted to aid interpretation (Figure 1) indicating that at higher levels of behavioral distress girls tended to shift toward relative right frontal activation during SFP, whereas boys tended to transition to greater left frontal dominance.

Authors

• Josh Underwood, Washington State University
  Presenting Author

• Magen Lowe, Washington State University

• Maria Amy Gartstein, Washington State University