Parents, Children, and Infants Differentially Attend to Discrete Emotion Contexts

• In Event: Emotion Understanding Across Development: Implications for Interpersonal and Educational Contexts

Abstract

Understanding others’ emotions involves appreciating how the individual relates with their environment on matters of personal significance (see Walle et al., 2017). Thus, appreciating the “aboutness” of emotional communication is essential for adaptive functioning. For example, attending to an approaching tarantula is likely of greater importance than staring at the fearful person, whereas focusing on a sad individual rather than the eliciting event may be more likely to prompt prosocial behavior. We describe a series of studies demonstrating that adults, parents, children, and infants differentially attend to elements (i.e., the emoter and referent) of discrete emotion contexts.

Our initial study explored whether adults differentially described images that depicted discrete emotion context (Knothe & Walle, 2019). A sample of college students described images that featured an emoter expressing an emotion (i.e., anger, sadness, fear, disgust, joy) toward a referent. We found that adults mentioned the emoter more when describing anger and sadness, and the referent more when describing fear and disgust.

Study 2 extended these findings by observing how parents talked to their infant about discrete emotion contexts (Knothe & Walle, 2018). Infant-caregiver dyads (n=38; Mage=21.22 months) completed a semi-structured picture book task. The book included 10 images, each featuring a single child (emoter) displaying one of five emotions (i.e., anger, sadness, joy, disgust, fear) and an object toward which the emotion was directed (referent). Similar to our prior study, parent descriptions to their infant highlighted the emoter more for anger and sadness images, and the referent more for fear, disgust, and joy images.

Study 3 examined whether children would demonstrate similar differences in mentioning the emoter and the referent across discrete emotions. Children aged 3.5 years (n = 22) and 4.5 years (n = 23) described the images used in Knothe and Walle (2018), matched to participant gender. Results indicated that 4.5-year-old children emphasized the emoter more in anger and sadness contexts, and mentioned the referent more in disgust and fear contexts. However, such differential emphasis of the relational elements was absent for 3.5-year-old children.

Though convincing, the above studies were limited by relying on verbal descriptions to assess attentional allocation. Thus, Study 4 assessed infant looking to the emoter and the referent in a dynamic video presentation. Twelve 2-year-olds (M = 25.21 months, SD = 2.58) saw 17-second videos of an adult expressing an emotion (i.e., joy, sadness, disgust) toward a novel stimulus (emotion order randomized; Note: COVID-19 pandemic halted data collection). Duration of infant looking to the emoter and the referent was assessed. Infants looked significantly more at the experimenter (M = 9.16 seconds) than the object (M = 2.49 seconds) during sadness labeling trials, p < .001, though no such differences were present for joy or disgust. Importantly, the sadness findings mirror the verbal descriptions of adults, parents, and children.

These studies provide clear evidence that adults, parents, children, and infants differentially attend to relational elements in discrete emotion contexts. Consideration of developmental mechanisms and how attentional biases may impact emotion functioning will be discussed.

Authors

• Eric A Walle, University of California - Merced
  Presenting Author

• Jennifer M Knothe, Children’s Oncology Group

• Lukas D Lopez, University of Utah