title: Multimodal processing of emotional information in 9-month-old infants II: prenatal exposure to maternal anxiety.
abstract: The ability to read emotional expressions from human face and voice is an important skill in our day-to-day interactions with others. How this ability develops may be influenced by atypical experiences early in life. Here, we investigated multimodal processing of fearful and happy face/voice pairs in 9-month-olds prenatally exposed to maternal anxiety, using event-related potentials (ERPs). Infants were presented with emotional vocalisations (happy/fearful) preceded by emotional facial expressions (happy/fearful). The results revealed larger P350 amplitudes in response to fearful vocalisations when infants had been exposed to higher levels of anxiety, regardless of the type of visual prime, which may indicate increased attention to fearful vocalisations. A trend for a positive association between P150 amplitudes and maternal anxiety scores during pregnancy may suggest these infants are more easily aroused by and extract features more thoroughly from fearful vocalisations as well. These findings are compatible with the hypothesis that prenatal exposure to maternal anxiety is related to more extensive processing of fear-related stimuli.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Tilburg University, PO Box 90153, 5000 LE Tilburg, The Netherlands. Electronic address: r.a.otte@tilburguniversity.edu.
authors.forename: R A
authors.initials: RA
authors.lastname: Otte
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Tilburg University, PO Box 90153, 5000 LE Tilburg, The Netherlands; Department of Psychiatry, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 101 Manning Drive, Chapel Hill, NC 27514, USA; Department of Cognitive Neuroscience, Maastricht University, Oxfordlaan 55, 6229 EV Maastricht, The Netherlands. Electronic address: franc.donkers@maastrichtuniversity.nl.
authors.forename: F C L
authors.initials: FC
authors.lastname: Donkers
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Tilburg University, PO Box 90153, 5000 LE Tilburg, The Netherlands; Faculty of Medicine and Life Sciences, Hasselt University, Agoralaan, Building C, 3590 Diepenbeek, Belgium. Electronic address: m.braeken@tilburguniversity.edu.
authors.forename: M A K A
authors.initials: MA
authors.lastname: Braeken
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Tilburg University, PO Box 90153, 5000 LE Tilburg, The Netherlands; Department of Psychology, KU Leuven, PO Box 3726, 3000 Leuven, Belgium; Department of Welfare, Public Health and Family, Flemish Government, PO Box 30, 1030 Brussels, Belgium. Electronic address: bea.vdnbergh@tilburguniversity.edu.
authors.forename: B R H
authors.initials: BR
authors.lastname: Van den Bergh
mesh_terms: D001007:Anxiety; D002540:Cerebral Cortex / Q000502:physiology*; D004569:Electroencephalography; D004644:Emotions / Q000502:physiology*; D005071:Evoked Potentials; D005149:Facial Expression; D000066499:Facial Recognition / Q000502:physiology*; D005239:Fear; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D008297:Male; D011247:Pregnancy; D011248:Pregnancy Complications / Q000523:psychology*; D014831:Voice
keywords: Anxiety; Developmental origins of health and disease (DOBHAD); Emotion perception; Event-related potential (ERP); Infant; Multimodal processing