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Related Experiment Video

Updated: Oct 18, 2025

Exploring Infant Sensitivity to Visual Language using Eye Tracking and the Preferential Looking Paradigm

Exploring Infant Sensitivity to Visual Language using Eye Tracking and the Preferential Looking Paradigm

Published on: May 15, 2019

Infants' Selective Visual Attention Is Dependent on Maternal Affect and Emotional Context.

Joshua Juvrud¹, Sara A Haas^1,2, Nathan A Fox²

¹Department of Psychology, Uppsala Child and Baby Lab, Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden.

Frontiers in Psychology

|October 4, 2021

Summary

Infants

Keywords:

emotional context face emotion infancy maternal negative affect selective attention

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Last Updated: Oct 18, 2025

Exploring Infant Sensitivity to Visual Language using Eye Tracking and the Preferential Looking Paradigm

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Published on: May 15, 2019

Gaze in Action: Head-mounted Eye Tracking of Children's Dynamic Visual Attention During Naturalistic Behavior

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Published on: November 14, 2018

Defining the Role Of Language in Infants' Object Categorization with Eye-tracking Paradigms

Defining the Role Of Language in Infants' Object Categorization with Eye-tracking Paradigms

Published on: February 8, 2019

Area of Science:

Developmental Psychology
Cognitive Neuroscience
Infant Social Cognition

Background:

Selective attention development is crucial for cognitive and socio-emotional skills in infants.
Maternal interactions significantly shape the early social environment for infants.
Understanding how infants process social cues is key to early development.

Purpose of the Study:

To investigate the combined effects of maternal negative affect and emotion face primes (mother vs. stranger) on infant selective visual attention.
To determine if infants' attention is modulated by the familiarity of emotion faces.
To explore the interaction between maternal emotional state and infant attention to social cues.

Main Methods:

Utilized a visual search task with 9-month-old infants (N=70).
Employed emotion face primes (fearful, angry) from familiar (mother) and unfamiliar (stranger) individuals.
Analyzed data using linear mixed-effects modeling to assess attention.
Measured maternal negative affect as a covariate.

Main Results:

Infants were quicker to locate a visual target after viewing fearful faces (mother or stranger) or their mother's angry face.
Maternal negative affect amplified the effect of fearful faces on infant attention, leading to faster search times.
A significant interaction was found between face emotion and maternal negative affect, influencing infant attention.

Conclusions:

Infant selective visual attention is influenced by both the emotion expressed on a face and the familiarity of the individual displaying the emotion.
Maternal emotional state plays a moderating role in how infants attend to social cues in their environment.
These findings highlight the intricate interplay between early social experiences and the development of attentional mechanisms in infants.