Poster #137 - The role of temperamental shyness in children’s short-term adaptation to changing facial prototypes

• In Event: Poster Session 09

Abstract

Temperamental shyness is defined as an anxious preoccupation with the self in real or imagined social situations. Childhood shyness has the potential to interfere with the development of various social cognitive abilities, which are crucial for healthy socioemotional functioning. For example, shyness has been found to impede empathic and helping behavior in early childhood (MacGowan & Schmidt, 2021, 2022). One reason for this reduction may be that shy children experience differences in the processing of social cues that are indicative of others’ safety or willingness to cooperate. This is supported by the fact that shy children are biased to signals of social threat (e.g., Lobue & Perez-Edgar, 2014). One of the most socially informative social cues that is relevant to prosocial situations is others’ faces. Facial processing involves continuously updating a facial prototype based on the social partners we are exposed to in our environment. Faces that tend closer to this prototype are generally perceived more positively and could be viewed as more friendly or safe. Our present study explored the role of shyness in children’s adaptation to short-term changes in facial prototype. With a face adaptation task, we explored the extent to which shy participants in middle childhood adapted to changing prototypes through their evaluations of facial empathy (i.e., cues of safety, tendency to cooperate).
We conducted Zoom visits with 77 typically developing 8-year-old children (42 female). Before engaging in the adaptation task, children were introduced to the concept of empathy with an interactive and age-appropriate animated slideshow.
For the pre-adaptation phase of the task proper, children observed male and female child faces (6 compressed, 6 widened, 7 undistorted; see Figure 1) and were asked to rate how empathetic each face was on a 5-point Likert scale. Participants in the ‘wide condition’ (n = 41) were then exposed to two exposures of 12 widened faces alongside a short narrative about children attending a zoo visit. Children in the ‘narrow condition’ (n = 36) watched the same story but with two exposures to 12 compressed faces. In the post-adaptation phase, participants observed the same faces as in the pre-adaptation phase and were asked again to rate how empathetic each face was. Parents completed the Shyness subscale of the Colorado Childhood Temperament Inventory (CCTI) with an online survey system.
Although there were no significant within-participant differences in empathy ratings pre- and post-adaptation for target face type, we detected individual differences in the extent to which children responded to adaptation. With a linear regression, we found that temperamental shyness was negatively associated with children’s adaptation response, such that as shyness increased, rating differences in empathy for the adapted face type from pre- to post-adaptation also increased. There were no differences between condition.
These findings suggest that shy children may experience more rigidity when exposed to short-term changes in their social environment. We interpret that this may be an adaptive mechanism that evolved as a method by which shy children seek out long term familiarity when making judgements about social partners’ safety.

Authors

• Taigan MacGowan, Queen’s University
  Presenting Author

• Rachel Scott

• Aleeza Sunderji

• Victoria Ricciardi

• Geoffrey B. Hall

• Louis A. Schmidt, McMaster University