Three- and six-year-old children are sensitive to natural body expressions of emotion: An event-related potential emotional priming study

Ke, Han; Vuong, Quoc C.; Geangu, Elena

doi:10.1016/j.jecp.2022.105497

Cited by 4 publications

(11 citation statements)

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“…There was also a higher proportion of fixations on anger and fear body expressions compared to happy expressions. These findings demonstrate that infants at this age can perceptually discriminate body expressions but there was no clear evidence that they processed the emotional content of those expressions (Ke et al, 2022;Ross & Atkinson, 2020). To address this, we analyzed the pupil data from the same infants, as pupil dilations reflect increased arousal induced by the emotional content of visual stimuli.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Seven‐months‐old infants show increased arousal to static emotion body expressions: Evidence from pupil dilation

Geangu

Vuong

2023

Infancy

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Human body postures provide perceptual cues that can be used to discriminate and recognize emotions. It was previously found that 7-months-olds' fixation patterns discriminated fear from other emotion body expressions but it is not clear whether they also process the emotional content of those expressions. The emotional content of visual stimuli can increase arousal level resulting in pupil dilations.To provide evidence that infants also process the emotional content of expressions, we analyzed variations in pupil in response to emotion stimuli. Forty-eight 7-months-old infants viewed adult body postures expressing anger, fear, happiness and neutral expressions, while their pupil size was measured. There was a significant emotion effect between 1040 and 1640 ms after image onset, when fear elicited larger pupil dilations than neutral expressions. A similar trend was found for anger expressions.Our results suggest that infants have increased arousal to negative-valence body expressions. Thus, in combination with previous fixation results, the pupil data show that infants as young as 7-months can perceptually discriminate static body expressions and process the emotional content of those expressions. The results extend information about infant processing of emotion expressions conveyed through other means (e.g., faces).

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Seven‐months‐old infants show increased arousal to static emotion body expressions: Evidence from pupil dilation

Geangu

Vuong

2023

Infancy

Self Cite

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The copyright holder for this this version posted February 22, 2023. ; https://doi.org/10.1101/2023.02.22.529523 doi: bioRxiv preprint visual stimuli have been observed to evoke lower N3 than positive emotional ones (Ke et al, 2022).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The middle-late component N3 is related to source allocation and response preparation. A lower amplitude of the N3 component is thought to reflect that more cognitive resources and brain resources are being mobilized to prepare for a response to the threat (Coenen, 1995; Ke et al, 2022; Mayer et al, 2021). E.g., higher cognitive tasks have been shown to elicit lower N3 amplitudes than simpler tasks (Michida et al, 1998).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…E.g., higher cognitive tasks have been shown to elicit lower N3 amplitudes than simpler tasks (Michida et al, 1998). Moreover, negative emotional visual stimuli have been observed to evoke lower N3 than positive emotional ones (Ke et al, 2022). In our experiment, we found threatening body expressions to elicit lower N3 than neutral body expressions, suggesting that the threatening stimuli elicited negative emotions and required more cognitive resources than the neutral stimuli.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Early threat perception is independent of later cognitive and behavioral control. A virtual reality-EEG-ECG study

Kemmerer

Riecke

et al. 2023

Preprint

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Research on social threat has shown influences of various factors, such as agent characteristics, proximity and social interaction on social threat perception. An important, yet understudied aspect of threat experience concerns the ability to exert control over the thread. In this study, we used a Virtual Reality (VR) environment showing an approaching avatar that was either angry (threatening body expression) or neutral (neutral body expression) and informed participants to stop avatars from coming closer under five levels of control success (0, 25, 50, 75, or 100%) when they felt uncomfortable. Behavioral results revealed that social threat triggered faster reactions at a greater virtual distance from the participant than the neutral avatar. Event-related potentials (ERPs) revealed that the angry avatar elicited a larger N170/vertex positive potential (VPP) and a smaller N3 than the neutral avatar. The 100% control condition elicited a larger late positive potential (LPP) than the 75% control condition. In addition, we observed enhanced theta power and accelerated heart rate for the angry avatar vs. neutral avatar, suggesting that these measures index threat perception. Our results indicate that perception of social threat takes place in early to middle cortical processing stages, and control ability is associated with cognitive evaluation in middle to late stages.

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Early threat perception is independent of later cognitive and behavioral control. A virtual reality-EEG-ECG study

Kemmerer

Riecke

et al. 2023

Cerebral Cortex

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Research on social threat has shown influences of various factors, such as agent characteristics, proximity, and social interaction on social threat perception. An important, yet understudied aspect of threat exposure concerns the ability to exert control over the threat and its implications for threat perception. In this study, we used a virtual reality (VR) environment showing an approaching avatar that was either angry (threatening body expression) or neutral (neutral body expression) and informed participants to stop avatars from coming closer under five levels of control success (0, 25, 50, 75, or 100%) when they felt uncomfortable. Behavioral results revealed that social threat triggered faster reactions at a greater virtual distance from the participant than the neutral avatar. Event-related potentials (ERPs) revealed that the angry avatar elicited a larger N170/vertex positive potential (VPP) and a smaller N3 than the neutral avatar. The 100% control condition elicited a larger late positive potential (LPP) than the 75% control condition. In addition, we observed enhanced theta power and accelerated heart rate for the angry avatar vs. neutral avatar, suggesting that these measures index threat perception. Our results indicate that perception of social threat takes place in early to middle cortical processing stages, and control ability is associated with cognitive evaluation in middle to late stages.

show abstract

Three- and six-year-old children are sensitive to natural body expressions of emotion: An event-related potential emotional priming study

Cited by 4 publications

References 101 publications

Seven‐months‐old infants show increased arousal to static emotion body expressions: Evidence from pupil dilation

Seven‐months‐old infants show increased arousal to static emotion body expressions: Evidence from pupil dilation

Early threat perception is independent of later cognitive and behavioral control. A virtual reality-EEG-ECG study

Early threat perception is independent of later cognitive and behavioral control. A virtual reality-EEG-ECG study

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