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Converging neural and behavioral evidence for a rapid, generalized response to threat-related facial expressions in 3-year-old children.
- Source :
-
NeuroImage . Apr2021, Vol. 229, pN.PAG-N.PAG. 1p. - Publication Year :
- 2021
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Abstract
- • Children's ERP and behavioral responses to facial expressions converge on an enhanced response to threat-related (i.e., fearful and angry) faces at 3 years of age. • A support vector machine learning model using ERP responses to threat reliably predicts overt attentional dwell time for threat-related faces. • There is little within-subject correlation between threat-bias attention in infancy and at 3 years of age. Electrophysiological studies on adults suggest that humans are efficient at detecting threat from facial information and tend to grant these signals a priority in access to attention, awareness, and action. The developmental origins of this bias are poorly understood, partly because few studies have examined the emergence of a generalized neural and behavioral response to distinct categories of threat in early childhood. We used event-related potential (ERP) and eye-tracking measures to examine children's early visual responses and overt attentional biases towards multiple exemplars of angry and fearful vs. other (e.g., happy and neutral) faces. A large group of children was assessed longitudinally in infancy (5, 7, or 12 months) and at 3 years of age. The final ERP dataset included 148 infants and 132 3-year-old children; and the final eye-tracking dataset included 272 infants and 334 3-year-olds. We demonstrate that 1) neural and behavioral responses to facial expressions converge on an enhanced response to fearful and angry faces at 3 years of age, with no differentiation between or bias towards one or the other of these expressions, and 2) a support vector machine learning model using data on the early-stage neural responses to threat reliably predicts the duration of overt attentional dwell time for threat-related faces at 3 years. However, we found little within-subject correlation between threat-bias attention in infancy and at 3 years of age. These results provide unique evidence for the early development of a rapid, unified response to two distinct categories of facial expressions with different physical characteristics, but shared threat-related meaning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
Details
- Language :
- English
- ISSN :
- 10538119
- Volume :
- 229
- Database :
- Academic Search Index
- Journal :
- NeuroImage
- Publication Type :
- Academic Journal
- Accession number :
- 149294490
- Full Text :
- https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuroimage.2021.117732