12-month-old infants allocate increased neural resources to stimuli associated with negative adult emotion.

Carver, Leslie J.; Vaccaro, Brenda G.

doi:10.1037/0012-1649.43.1.54

Cited by 68 publications

(72 citation statements)

References 59 publications

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“…These results are generally consistent with observational learning (Carver & Vaccaro, 2007;Mumme, Fernald, & Herrera, 1996) and classical conditioning studies, showing that reward learning does not produce as strong or as reliable effects as fear learning. This may be because reward stimuli used in experiments are not as arousing as commonly used aversive stimuli, and therefore do not engage the amygdala in learning.…”

Section: Behavioral and Neural Mechanisms Of Observational Learningsupporting

confidence: 86%

The influence of personality on neural mechanisms of observational fear and reward learning

et al. 2008

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Fear and reward learning can occur through direct experience or observation. Both channels can enhance survival or create maladaptive behavior. We used fMRI to isolate neural mechanisms of observational fear and reward learning and investigate whether neural response varied according to individual differences in neuroticism and extraversion. Participants learned object-emotion associations by observing a woman respond with fearful (or neutral) and happy (or neutral) facial expressions to novel objects. The amygdala-hippocampal complex was active when learning the object-fear association, and the hippocampus was active when learning the object-happy association. After learning, objects were presented alone; amygdala activity was greater for the fear (vs. neutral) and happy (vs. neutral) associated object. Importantly, greater amygdalahippocampal activity during fear (vs. neutral) learning predicted better recognition of learned objects on a subsequent memory test. Furthermore, personality modulated neural mechanisms of learning. Neuroticism positively correlated with neural activity in the amygdala and hippocampus during fear (vs. neutral) learning. Low extraversion/high introversion was related to faster behavioral predictions of the fearful and neutral expressions during fear learning. In addition, low extraversion/high introversion was related to greater amygdala activity during happy (vs. neutral) learning, happy (vs. neutral) object recognition, and faster reaction times for predicting happy and neutral expressions during reward learning. These findings suggest that neuroticism is associated with an increased sensitivity in the neural mechanism for fear learning which leads to enhanced encoding of fear associations, and that low extraversion/high introversion is related to enhanced conditionability for both fear and reward learning.

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Section: Behavioral and Neural Mechanisms Of Observational Learningsupporting

confidence: 86%

The influence of personality on neural mechanisms of observational fear and reward learning

et al. 2008

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“…Similar results have been reported in several other social referencing studies as well (e.g., L. J. Carver & Vaccaro, 2007;Hertenstein & Campos, 2001;Hornik et al, 1987). Furthermore, Klinnert et al's (1986) study (discussed in section 1a), which did not reveal a negativity bias in 12-month-olds' social referencing behavior, did suggest such a bias in infants' affect.…”

Section: B the Negativity Bias In Emotional Contagionsupporting

confidence: 85%

Not all emotions are created equal: The negativity bias in social-emotional development.

Vaish¹,

Großmann²,

Woodward³

2008

Psychological Bulletin

942

615

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There is ample empirical evidence for an asymmetry in the way that adults use positive versus negative information to make sense of their world; specifically, across an array of psychological situations and tasks, adults display a negativity bias, or the propensity to attend to, learn from, and use negative information far more than positive information. This bias is argued to serve critical evolutionarily adaptive functions, but its developmental presence and ontogenetic emergence have never seriously been considered. Here, we argue for the existence of the negativity bias in early development, evident especially in research on infant social referencing but also in other developmental domains. We discuss ontogenetic mechanisms underlying the emergence of this bias, and explore not only its evolutionary but also its developmental functions and consequences. Throughout, we suggest ways to further examine the negativity bias in infants and older children, and we make testable predictions that would help clarify the nature of the negativity bias during early development. KeywordsNegativity bias; Affective asymmetry; Social-cognitive development; Emotion; Social referencing Infants are exposed to a great deal of social information from birth, and their ability to use this information effectively is critical for development in many domains and for survival in general. This raises several important questions: do infants attend equally to all facets of this information, or do they attend to certain facets more than others? Do they, in addition, learn and remember particular kinds of information better than others? What evolutionary and developmental consequences do these ways of approaching the environment have? In this paper, we propose that infants display a negativity bias: that is, infants attend more to, are more influenced by, and use to a greater degree negative rather than positive facets of their environment. We propose possible ontogenetic pathways for the emergence of the negativity bias, and we argue that this bias serves important evolutionary and developmental functions.

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“…necklace glomeruli | pheromone | olfaction | PTSD | social referencing C hildren, including infants, use their parents' emotions to guide their behavior and learn about safety and danger (1)(2)(3)(4). The infant's ability to regulate behavior in novel situations using the caregiver's emotional expression is known as social referencing and occurs in humans and nonhuman primates (1).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The infant's ability to regulate behavior in novel situations using the caregiver's emotional expression is known as social referencing and occurs in humans and nonhuman primates (1). Although parental physical presence itself or particular cues indicating parental presence, such as voice, touch, or smell typically signal safety for the child, infants are especially responsive to the caregiver's communication during threats (3)(4)(5). This social learning is critical for enhancing survival through an adaptation to the environment but also provides transmission of pathological fears, such as occurs in posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) or in specific phobias (3)(4)(5)(6)(7).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Despite existing evidence that children are sensitive to parental fear and anxiety, the neurobiological mechanisms for the transmission of parental specific fear to the offspring have remained elusive (2)(3)(4)(5)(6)(7). Animal studies investigating the impact of parental stress on the offspring focused on the history of parental trauma, quality of maternal care, and resultant overall behavioral alterations in the offspring (7,8).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Intergenerational transmission of emotional trauma through amygdala-dependent mother-to-infant transfer of specific fear

Dębiec

Sullivan

2014

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

147

119

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Emotional trauma is transmitted across generations. For example, children witnessing their parent expressing fear to specific sounds or images begin to express fear to those cues. Within normal range, this is adaptive, although pathological fear, such as occurs in posttraumatic stress disorder or specific phobias, is also socially transmitted to children and is thus of clinical concern. Here, using a rodent model, we report a mother-to-infant transfer of fear to a novel peppermint odor, which is dependent on the mother expressing fear to that smell in pups' presence. Examination of pups' neural activity using c-Fos early gene expression and 14 C 2-deoxyglucose autoradiography during mother-to-infant fear transmission revealed lateral and basal amygdala nuclei activity, with a causal role highlighted by pharmacological inactivation of pups' amygdala preventing the fear transmission. Maternal presence was not needed for fear transmission, because an elevation of pups' corticosterone induced by the odor of the frightened mother along with a novel peppermint odor was sufficient to produce pups' subsequent aversion to that odor. Disruption of axonal tracts from the Grueneberg ganglion, a structure implicated in alarm chemosignaling, or blockade of pups' alarm odor-induced corticosterone increase prevented transfer of fear. These memories are acquired at younger ages compared with amygdala-dependent odorshock conditioning and are more enduring following minimal conditioning. Our results provide clues to understanding transmission of specific fears across generations and its dependence upon maternal induction of pups' stress response paired with the cue to induce amygdala-dependent learning plasticity. Results are discussed within the context of caregiver emotional responses and adaptive vs. pathological fears social transmission.necklace glomeruli | pheromone | olfaction | PTSD | social referencing

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12-month-old infants allocate increased neural resources to stimuli associated with negative adult emotion.

Cited by 68 publications

References 59 publications

The influence of personality on neural mechanisms of observational fear and reward learning

The influence of personality on neural mechanisms of observational fear and reward learning

Not all emotions are created equal: The negativity bias in social-emotional development.

Intergenerational transmission of emotional trauma through amygdala-dependent mother-to-infant transfer of specific fear

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