Maternal anxiety predicts attentional bias towards threat in infancy.

Abstract

Although cognitive theories of psychopathology suggest that attention bias towards threat plays a role in the etiology and maintenance of anxiety, there is relatively little evidence regarding individual differences in the earliest development of attention bias towards threat. The current study examines attention bias towards threat during its potential first emergence by evaluating the relations between attention bias and known risk factors of anxiety (i.e., temperamental negative affect and maternal anxiety). We measured attention bias to emotional faces in infants (N=98; 57 male) ages 4 to 24 months during an attention disengagement eye-tracking paradigm. We hypothesized that: 1) there would be an attentional bias towards threat in the full sample of infants, replicating previous studies, 2) attentional bias towards threat would be positively related to maternal anxiety, and 3) attention bias towards threat would be positively related to temperamental negative affect. Finally, 4) we explored the potential interaction between temperament and maternal anxiety in predicting attention bias towards threat. We found that attention bias to the affective faces did not change with age, and that bias was not related to temperament. However, attention bias to threat, but not attention bias to happy faces, was positively related to maternal anxiety, such that higher maternal anxiety predicted a larger attention bias for all infants. These findings provide support for attention bias as a putative early mechanism by which early markers of risk are associated with socioemotional development.

The impact of negative affect on attention patterns to threat across the first 2 years of life.

“…A strong line of studies has examined the emergence of differential attention to, and processing of, emotion stimuli, particularly as linked to threat processing (Peltola et al, 2015; Peltola et al, 2013; Peltola, Leppanen, Maki, et al, 2009; Peltola et al, 2008; Peltola, Leppanen, Vogel-Farley, et al, 2009). This literature has focused almost exclusively on normative changes over time (but see Forssman et al, 2014; Morales et al, in press; Peltola et al, 2015; Ravicz et al, 2015). In parallel, the anxiety literature has examined individual differences in threat processing as a putative causal mechanism for the emergence of social maladjustment and disorder (Dudeney et al, 2015; Pergamin-Hight, Naim, Bakermans-Kranenburg, van IJzendoorn, & Bar-Haim, 2015).…”

“…However, we were able to derive effect size estimates from recent papers examining main-effects and two-way interactions in infant eye-tracking studies of attention to threat (LoBue, Buss, Taber-Thomas, & Pérez-Edgar, 2017; Morales et al, in press). These studies found medium effect sizes ( d 's between 0.37 and 0.42) for the comparable analyses.…”

“…It is not clear if a similar pattern would emerge in a sample with a wider age range using eye-tracking measures of attention. Finally, a recent study finds that while maternal anxiety was associated with infant attention bias in an eye-tracking disengagement task, temperamental negative affect was not (Morales et al, in press). …”

Maternal Depressive Symptoms During the Pre‐ and Postnatal Periods and Infant Attention to Emotional Faces

“…Similarly, Morales et al. () reported an association between maternal current anxiety symptoms and infant's heightened bias to angry facial expressions. This hypersensitivity of the infant's developing threat‐appraisal system may increase vulnerability to environmental stressors.…”

Infants' attention bias to faces as an early marker of social development

“…Farley, Hietanen, & Nelson, 2009), but there are indications that this tendency may decline and shift toward a more adult-like (e.g.,Green, Williams, & Davidson, 2003) distributed scanning pattern over time.Further research is needed to examine whether some of these processes contribute to infants' attention holding on faces (and, particularly, fearful faces) and the potential subsequent reduction of these biases in early childhood. WhileNakagawa and Sukigara (2012) observed in a small longitudinal sample that attention to neutral, happy, and fearful faces declined from 24 to 36 months of age, cross-sectional studies investigating attention to neutral, happy, and angry faces in 4-to 24-month-old(Morales et al, 2017) and 9-to 48-month-old (Burris, Barry-Anwar, & Rivera, 2017) children pointed to a more stable pattern by showing that the patterns of attention biases toward angry and happy faces were not affected by age. WhileNakagawa and Sukigara (2012) observed in a small longitudinal sample that attention to neutral, happy, and fearful faces declined from 24 to 36 months of age, cross-sectional studies investigating attention to neutral, happy, and angry faces in 4-to 24-month-old(Morales et al, 2017) and 9-to 48-month-old (Burris, Barry-Anwar, & Rivera, 2017) children pointed to a more stable pattern by showing that the patterns of attention biases toward angry and happy faces were not affected by age.…”