Emotional interference of baby and adult faces on automatic attention in parenthood.

Abstract

Protecting and nurturing offspring have been crucial to human evolution. For that reason, babies are very salient emotional stimuli to human beings. The current study compared the emotional interference of baby and adult faces on the automatic attention in 61 parents and nonparents (36 women, 20–35 years old; parents [n = 33] had a single child aged up to 2 years old). Images of distressed, happy, and neutral baby faces, and fearful, happy, and neutral adult faces, were used in a go/no-go paradigm to assess attentional bias. Attentional bias indexes were calculated for biases toward baby distress, baby versus adult faces, and adult fear. Parents showed a higher attentional bias toward baby versus adult faces (M = 17.62, SD = 50.52) than nonparents (M = −8.52, SD = 32.39), F(1) = 5.39, p = .024, η2 = 0.08. This bias was independent of the emotion expressions in the face stimuli. This study demonstrates that parental status influences attentional bias toward baby faces in men and women, and contributes further to the literature that previously focused mainly on women.

The importance of differentiating between cold and hot response inhibition in the parenting context, when examining associations with harsh parenting.

“…Thus, parents' reduced RI in the emotional face condition is thought to reflect interference of parental RI due to the emotional face context. The interpretation of context-related reductions in parent RI as "interference effects" is in line with previous research on the topic (e.g., De Houwer & Tibboel, 2010;Oliveira et al, 2017;Pessoa, 2010).…”

“…Replicating results in nonparents would bear great importance for early detection of risk and early intervention, even before the transition to parenthood. Previous studies in other domains of cognitive functioning such as attention to infant faces have pointed toward significant differences between parents and nonparents in processing infant emotional facial cues (Oliveira et al, 2017). Nevertheless, whether such processing differences would be predictive of dissimilarities in actual parenting behavior remains unknown.…”

The Hierarchical Relationship Between the Relational-Self and the Collective-Self During Attention Processing

“…Stimuli that are emotionally significant receive enhanced processing and are prioritized in the competition for selective attention. 11 Preliminary findings supported the idea of the advantage of the RS and CS during attention processing. 12–14 The attention process is the first and foremost process by which we process information; without attention, people find it difficult to process information at a deeper level.…”

The expectant social mind: A systematic review of face processing during pregnancy and the effect of depression and anxiety

“…Mothers' reactions to infant stimuli is different from nulliparous women's reactions to these same stimuli (Oliveira et al, 2017;Peltola et al, 2014;Proverbio et al, 2006;Thompson-Booth et al, 2014). Moreover, evidence proves a long-term effect of pregnancy in shaping brain structure (Hoekzema et al, 2016), and these modifications endured for at least two years after birth.…”