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A Within-subjects Experimental Protocol to Assess the Effects of Social Input on Infant EEG
Published on: May 3, 2017
Less attention to emotional faces is associated with low empathy and prosociality in 12-to 20-month old infants
Meghan Rose Donohue1, M Catalina Camacho1, Jordan E Drake1
1Department of Psychiatry, Washington University School of Medicine, Saint Louis, Missouri, USA.
Insights
Early emotion processing deficits in infants are linked to reduced empathy and prosocial behavior. Decreased attention to negative emotional faces, especially eye regions, by 12 months is associated with less prosociality.
Area of Science:
- Developmental Psychology
- Social Neuroscience
- Infant Behavior
Background:
- Empathy and prosocial behavior develop early in infancy.
- Emotion processing skills are crucial for developing empathy and prosociality.
- Early deficits in emotion processing may disrupt the development of these social behaviors.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the association between early emotion processing deficits and disruptions in empathy and prosocial development.
- To examine how attention to negative emotional faces in infancy relates to later prosocial behaviors.
- To understand the role of emotion recognition in the early development of empathy.
Main Methods:
- Studied 147 diverse infants aged 11-20 months.
- Utilized observational tasks for prosocial helping, empathy, and comforting behaviors.
- Employed eye-tracking to assess infant engagement with negative emotional faces.
Main Results:
- Infants with less attention to negative faces (angry, sad, fearful) showed fewer helping behaviors.
- Reduced attention to the eye regions of faces correlated with lower helping behaviors.
- Quicker disengagement from angry facial eyes, but not whole faces, was linked to less empathy and comforting.
Conclusions:
- Decreased attention to negative emotional faces, particularly eye regions, is associated with reduced empathy and prosociality in infants as young as 12 months.
- These findings highlight the critical role of early emotion processing in the development of social behaviors.
- Early identification of attention deficits towards emotional cues may inform interventions for prosocial development.
Abstract:
The development of empathy and prosocial behavior begins in infancy and is likely supported by emotion processing skills. The current study explored whether early emerging deficits in emotion processing are associated with disruptions in the development of empathy and prosociality. We investigated this question in a large, diverse sample of 147, 11- to 20-month-old infants (42% female; 61% Black; 67% low socioeconomic status). Infants completed two observational tasks assessing prosocial helping and one task assessing empathy and prosocial comforting behavior. Infants also completed an eye-tracking task assessing engagement and disengagement with negative emotional faces. Infants who attended less to angry, sad, and fearful faces (i.e., by being slower to look at and/or quicker to look away from negative compared to neutral faces) engaged in fewer helping behaviors, and effect sizes were larger when examining infants' attention toward the eye regions of faces. Additionally, infants who were quicker to look away from the eye regions of angry faces, but not the whole face, displayed less empathy and comforting behaviors. Results suggest that as early as 12 months of age, infants' decreased attention toward negative emotional faces, particularly the eye regions, is associated with less empathy and prosociality during a developmental period in which these abilities are rapidly maturing.
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