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Abstract In childhood, higher levels of temperamental fear—an early‐emerging proclivity to distress in the face of novelty—are associated with lower social responsivity and greater social anxiety. While the early emergence of temperamental fear in infancy is poorly understood, it is theorized to be driven by individual differences in reactivity and self‐regulation to novel stimuli. The current study used eye tracking to capture infants’ (N = 124) reactions to a video of a smiling stranger—a common social encounter—including infant gaze aversions from the stranger's face (indexing arousal regulation) and pupil dilation (indexing physiological reactivity), longitudinally at 2, 4, 6, and 8 months of age. Multilevel mixed‐effects models indicated that more fearful infants took more time to look away from a smiling stranger's face than less fearful infants, suggesting that high‐fear infants may have slower arousal regulation. At 2 and 4 months, more fearful infants also exhibited greater and faster pupil dilation before gaze aversions, consistent with greater physiological reactivity. Together, these findings suggest that individual differences in infants’ gaze aversions and pupil dilation can index the development of fearful temperament in early infancy, facilitating the identification of, and interventions for, risk factors to social disruptions.
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Emerging Adults Mirror Infants’ Emotions and Yawns
ABSTRACT Infants’ nonverbal expressions—a broad smile or a sharp cry—are powerful at eliciting reactions. Although parents’ reactions to their own infants’ expressions are relatively well understood, here we studied whether adults more generally exhibit behavioral and physiological reactions tounfamiliarinfants producing various expressions. We recruited U.S. emerging adults (N = 84) prior to parenthood, 18–25 years old, 68% women, ethnically (20% Hispanic/Latino) and racially (7% Asian, 13% Black, 1% Middle Eastern, 70% White, 8% multiracial) diverse. They observed four 80‐s audio–video clips of unfamiliar 2‐ to 6‐month‐olds crying, smiling, yawning, and sitting calmly (emotionally neutral control). Each compilation video depicted 9 different infants (36 clips total). We found adults mirrored behaviorally and physiologically: more positive facial expressions to infants smiling, and more negative facial expressions and pupil dilation—indicating increases in arousal—to infants crying. Adults also yawned more and had more pupil dilation when observing infants yawning. Together, these findings suggest that even nonparent emerging adults are highly sensitive to unfamiliar infants’ expressions, which they naturally “catch” (i.e., behaviorally and physiologically mirror), even without instructions. Such sensitivity may have—over the course of humans’ evolutionary history—been selected for, to facilitate adults’ processing of preverbal infants’ expressions to meet their needs.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1653737
- PAR ID:
- 10535131
- Publisher / Repository:
- Wiley Blackwell (John Wiley & Sons)
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Developmental Psychobiology
- Volume:
- 66
- Issue:
- 6
- ISSN:
- 0012-1630
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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