title: Facing threat: infants' and adults' visual scanning of faces with neutral, happy, sad, angry, and fearful emotional expressions.
abstract: Human faces are among the most important visual stimuli that we encounter at all ages. This importance partly stems from the face as a conveyer of information on the emotional state of other individuals. Previous research has demonstrated specific scanning patterns in response to threat-related compared to non-threat-related emotional expressions. This study investigated how visual scanning patterns toward faces which display different emotional expressions develop during infancy. The visual scanning patterns of 4-month-old and 7-month-old infants and adults when looking at threat-related (i.e., angry and fearful) versus non-threat-related (i.e., happy, sad, and neutral) emotional faces were examined. We found that infants as well as adults displayed an avoidant looking pattern in response to threat-related emotional expressions with reduced dwell times and relatively less fixations to the inner features of the face. In addition, adults showed a pattern of eye contact avoidance when looking at threat-related emotional expressions that was not yet present in infants. Thus, whereas a general avoidant reaction to threat-related facial expressions appears to be present from very early in life, the avoidance of eye contact might be a learned response toward others' anger and fear that emerges later during development.
authors: Center for Cognition, Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour, Radboud University Nijmegen, PO Box 9104, NL-6500 HE Nijmegen, The Netherlands. s.hunnius@donders.ru.nl
authors: Sabine
authors: S
authors: Hunnius
authors: Tessa C J
authors: TC
authors: de Wit
authors: Sven
authors: S
authors: Vrins
authors: Claes
authors: C
authors: von Hofsten
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000786:Anger / Q000502:physiology*; D002657:Child Development / Q000502:physiology*; D004644:Emotions / Q000502:physiology*; D005149:Facial Expression; D005239:Fear / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D005403:Fixation, Ocular / Q000502:physiology*; D006240:Happiness; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D008297:Male; D010775:Photic Stimulation / Q000379:methods; D014796:Visual Perception / Q000502:physiology*