How do emotion words impact children's emotion learning?

Previous research suggests that the use of emotion labels helps children to learn about emotions. However, the mechanism behind this relation remains somewhat elusive. The present study examined 3-year-old children's (N = 72; Mage = 3.51 years; 42 female) ability to match faces to emotional vignettes, and the role that the use of emotion labels plays in this process. Parents identified participating children as White (N = 37), multiracial (N = 17), African American/Black (N = 5), Asian (N = 5), Hispanic (N = 3), Latino (N = 2), South Asian/Indian (N = 1), Middle Eastern (N = 1), and other (N = 1), and most children had a parent with a college degree (N = 66). After a pretest, children heard either explicit emotion labels ("she feels annoyed"), novel labels ("she feels wuggy"), or irrelevant information ("she sits down") paired with a vignette and associated facial configuration. Children were then tested again at posttest for evidence of learning. Results revealed that children only improved from pre- to posttest in the explicit label condition, demonstrating that explicit emotion labels, which are likely to be familiar to children, facilitate children's learning of emotion information. Altogether, our results suggest that familiarity with emotion words from prior daily experience may best explain how emotion words influence children's learning about emotions. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Categorical and latent profile approaches to temperamental infant reactivity and early trajectories of socioemotional adjustment.

This article examines the patterns, and consequences, of infant temperamental reactivity to novel sensory input in a large (N = 357; 271 in current analysis) and diverse longitudinal sample through two approaches. First, we examined profiles of reactivity in 4-month-old infants using the traditional theory-driven analytic approach laid out by Jerome Kagan and colleagues, and derived groups characterized by extreme patterns of negative reactivity and positive reactivity. We then used a theory-neutral, data-driven approach to create latent profiles of reactivity from the same infants. Despite differences in sample characteristics and recruitment strategy, we noted similar reactivity groups relative to prior cohorts. The current data-driven approach found four profiles: high positive, high negative, high motor, and low reactive. Follow-up analyses found differential predictions of internalizing, externalizing, dysregulation, and competence trajectories across 12, 18, and 24 months of life based on 4-month reactivity profiles. Findings are discussed in light of the initial formulation of early reactivity by Kagan and the four decades of research that has followed to refine, bolster, and expand on this approach to child-centered individual differences. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

The impact of household pets on children's daily lives: Differences in parent-child conversations and implications for children's emotional development.

Living with a pet is related to a host of socioemotional health benefits for children, yet few studies have examined the mechanisms that drive the relations between pet ownership and positive socioemotional outcomes. The current study examined one of the ways that pets may change the environment through which children learn and whether childhood pet ownership might promote empathy and prosocial behavior through parent-child conversations about emotions and mental states in the presence of a pet dog. Participants included 123 parent (118 mothers, four fathers) and child (65 female, 58 male, Mage = 39.50 months, 75 White, not Hispanic, nine Asian/Pacific Islander, seven Hispanic, five Black/African American, two South Asian/Indian, two American Indian/Alaska Native, two "other," 21 more than one race, 111 residing in the United States) dyads currently living with a pet dog (n = 61) or having never lived with a pet dog (n = 62). As hypothesized, we found that parents used a greater proportion of emotion and mental state language with their children when playing with their pet dog than with a lifelike toy, suggesting that the presence of a household pet may be one context used to promote conversations about emotions and mental states. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

A Novel Approach to Assessing Infant and Child Mental Rotation.

Mental rotation is a critically important, early developing spatial skill that is related to other spatial cognitive abilities. Understanding the early development of this skill, however, requires a developmentally appropriate assessment that can be used with infants, toddlers, and young children. We present here a new eye-tracking task that uses a staircase procedure to assess mental rotation in 12-, 24-, and 36-month-old children (N = 41). To ensure that all children understood the task, the session began with training and practice, in which the children learned to fixate which of two houses a giraffe, facing either left or right, would approach. The adaptive two-up, one-down staircase procedure assessed the children's ability to fixate the correct house when the giraffe was rotated in 30° (up) or 15° (down) increments. The procedure was successful, with most children showing evidence of mental rotation. In addition, the children were less likely to succeed as the angle of rotation increased, and the older children succeeded at higher angles of rotation than the younger children, replicating previous findings with other procedures. The present study contributes a new paradigm that can assess the development of mental rotation in young children and holds promise for yielding insights into individual differences in mental rotation.

Examining transactional associations between maternal internalizing symptoms, infant negative emotionality, and infant respiratory sinus arrhythmia.

The current study examined transactional associations between maternal internalizing symptoms, infant negative emotionality, and infant resting respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA). We used data from the Longitudinal Attention and Temperament Study (N = 217) to examine the associations between maternal internalizing symptoms, infant negative emotionality, and infant resting RSA from 4-months to 18-months using a random-intercepts cross-lagged panel model. We found that mothers with higher average internalizing symptoms have infants with higher levels of resting RSA. However, there were no stable, between-individual differences in infant negative emotionality across time. Additionally, we found significant negative within-dyad cross-lagged associations from maternal internalizing symptoms to subsequent measures of infant negative emotionality, as well as a significant negative cross-lagged association from maternal internalizing symptoms to child resting RSA after 12-months of age. Lastly, we find evidence for infant-directed effects of negative emotionality and resting RSA to maternal internalizing symptoms. Results highlight the complex, bidirectional associations in maternal-infant dyads during the first two years of life, and the importance of considering the co-development of infant reactivity and regulatory processes in the context of maternal internalizing symptoms.

Heightened fearfulness in infants is not adaptive.

Grossmann proposes the "fearful ape hypothesis," suggesting that heightened fearfulness in early life is evolutionarily adaptive. We question this claim with evidence that (1) perceived fearfulness in children is associated with negative, not positive long-term outcomes; (2) caregivers are responsive to all affective behaviors, not just those perceived as fearful; and (3) caregiver responsiveness serves to reduce perceived fearfulness.

Assessing bidirectional relations between infant temperamental negative affect, maternal anxiety symptoms and infant affect-biased attention across the first 24-months of life.

Developmental theories suggest affect-biased attention, preferential attention to emotionally salient stimuli, emerges during infancy through coordinating individual differences. Here we examined bidirectional relations between infant affect-biased attention, temperamental negative affect, and maternal anxiety symptoms using a Random Intercepts Cross-Lagged Panel model (RI-CLPM). Infant-mother pairs from Central Pennsylvania and Northern New Jersey (N = 342; 52% White; 50% reported as assigned female at birth) participated when infants were 4, 8, 12, 18 and 24 months of age. Infants completed the overlap task while eye-tracking data were collected. Mothers reported their infant's negative affect and their own anxiety symptoms. In an RI-CLPM, after accounting for between-person variance (random intercepts representing the latent average of a construct), it is possible to assess within-person variance (individual deviations from the latent average of a construct). Positive relations represent stability in constructs (smaller within-person deviations). Negative relations represent fluctuation in constructs (larger within-person deviations). At the between-person level (random intercepts), mothers with greater anxiety symptoms had infants with greater affect-biased attention. However, at the within-person level (deviations), greater fluctuation in maternal anxiety symptoms at 12- and 18 months prospectively related to greater stability in attention to angry facial configurations. Additionally, greater fluctuation in maternal anxiety symptoms at 18 months prospectively related to greater stability in attention to happy facial configurations. Finally, greater fluctuation in maternal anxiety symptoms at 4- and 12 months prospectively related to greater stability in infant negative affect. These results suggest that environmental uncertainty, linked to fluctuating maternal anxiety, may shape early socioemotional development. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Variability in caregiver attention bias to threat: A Goldilocks effect in infant emotional development?

Attention biases to threat are considered part of the etiology of anxiety disorders. Attention bias variability (ABV) quantifies intraindividual fluctuations in attention biases and may better capture the relation between attention biases and psychopathology risk versus mean levels of attention bias. ABV to threat has been associated with attentional control and emotion regulation, which may impact how caregivers interact with their child. In a relatively diverse sample of infants (50% White, 50.7% female), we asked how caregiver ABV to threat related to trajectories of infant negative affect across the first 2 years of life. Families were part of a multi-site longitudinal study, and data were collected from 4 to 24 months of age. Multilevel modeling examined the effect of average caregiver attention biases on changes in negative affect. We found a significant interaction between infant age and caregiver ABV to threat. Probing this interaction revealed that infants of caregivers with high ABV showed decreases in negative affect over time, while infants of caregivers with low-to-average ABV showed potentiated increases in negative affect. We discuss how both high and extreme patterns of ABV may relate to deviations in developmental trajectories.

How the Emotional Environment Shapes the Emotional Life of the Child.

Emotion understanding facilitates the development of healthy social interactions. To develop emotion knowledge, infants and young children must learn to make inferences about people's dynamically changing facial and vocal expressions in the context of their everyday lives. Given that emotional information varies so widely, the emotional input that children receive might particularly shape their emotion understanding over time. This review explores how variation in children's received emotional input shapes their emotion understanding and their emotional behavior over the course of development. Variation in emotional input from caregivers shapes individual differences in infants' emotion perception and understanding, as well as older children's emotional behavior. Finally, this work can inform policy and focus interventions designed to help infants and young children with social-emotional development.

Bi-directional relations between attention and social fear across the first two years of life.

This study examined longitudinal relations between attention and social fear across the first two years of life. Our sample consisted of 357 infants and their caregivers across three sites. Data was collected at 4, 8, 12, 18, and 24 months of age. At all 5 assessments, the infants participated in 2 eye-tracking tasks (Vigilance and Overlap) which measured different components of attention bias (orientation, engagement, and disengagement), and parents completed questionnaires assessing infant temperament. For the first three assessments, social fear was measured using the Infant Behavioral Questionnaire-Revised (IBQ-R; Gartstein & Rothbart, 2003) focused on interactions with strangers, and for the final two time points, we used the social fearfulness subscale on the Toddler Behavior Assessment Questionnaire (TBAQ; Goldsmith, 1996). The results of a random intercept cross-lagged panel model showed intermittent evidence of uni-directional and reciprocal relations between attention to both threatening and positive emotion facial configurations and social fear. Our findings suggest that characteristics of behaviorally inhibited temperament-in this case, social fear-begin to interact with attention biases to emotion in the very first year of life, which carries implications for the timing of future interventions designed to mitigate the early development of maladaptive patterns of attention.

"It bites!": The transmission of negative information about snakes and spiders through a naturalistic picture book interaction.

Snakes and spiders are two of the most commonly feared animals worldwide, yet we know very little about the mechanisms by which such fears are acquired. We explored whether negative information about snakes and spiders from parents shapes children's fear beliefs. Study 1 included 27 parents (22 mothers, five fathers) and children (12 female, 15 male, Mage = 5.33 years, 18 White, one Hispanic, eight more than one race). Most parents reported having an advanced degree (78%) and an annual household income of above $100,000 (74%). Participants read an animal picture book and then rated their fear toward each animal. Study 2 included 54 parents (44 mothers, eight fathers, two legal guardians) and children (27 female, 27 male, Mage = 5.52 years, 30 White, one Hispanic, seven Asian/Pacific Islander, four South Asian/Indian, 12 more than one race). Most parents reported holding an AA/BA degree (28%) or an advanced degree (59%) and reported an annual household income of $60,000-$100,000 (28%) or above $100,000 (59%). In Study 2, half of the parents were primed about how their conversations might shape children's fear prior to reading the book. Across both studies, we found that participants provided more negative than positive information about snakes and spiders and provided less positive (Study 1) and more negative (Study 2) information compared to other animals. Our results highlight the prominence of negative information in conversations about snakes and spiders and suggest that the way parents talk about these animals may shape the development of children's fears. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Behavioral avoidance of contagious and non-contagious adults.

Evolutionary theories of disease avoidance propose that humans have a set of universal psychological processes to detect environmental cues indicative of infectious disease. These processes then initiate cognitive, emotional, and behavioral responses that function to limit contact with harmful pathogens. Here, we study the conditions under which people exhibit behavioral avoidance of others with a contagious illness or a physical injury (i.e., a broken leg), and the potential mechanisms that underlie this behavior. Across three studies, participants were given the option of sitting at one of two workstations previously occupied by two confederates, one of whom either showed visible symptoms of a cold (contagion condition), wore a lower-leg orthopedic boot and used crutches (broken leg condition), or showed no signs of illness or physical injury (control). We found strong evidence that adults explicitly avoid contact with individuals who show symptoms of a contagious illness. Further, we provide some evidence that adults also avoid individuals with a physical injury, but that this behavior might be driven by implicit, unconscious processes. The findings are discussed in terms of implications for the healthy avoidance of contagion, and the risk for potential stigmatization of non-contagious groups.

Developmental patterns of affective attention across the first 2 years of life.

This study examined patterns of attention toward affective stimuli in a longitudinal sample of typically developing infants (N = 357, 147 females, 50% White, 22% Latinx, 16% African American/Black, 3% Asian, 8% mixed race, 1% not reported) using two eye-tracking tasks that measure vigilance to (rapid detection), engagement with (total looking toward), and disengagement from (latency to looking away) emotional facial configurations. Infants completed each task at 4, 8, 12, 18, and 24 months of age from 2016 to 2020. Multilevel growth models demonstrate that, over the first 2 years of life, infants became faster at detecting and spent more time engaging with angry over neutral faces. These results have implications for our understanding of the development of affect-biased attention.

Using machine learning to understand age and gender classification based on infant temperament.

Age and gender differences are prominent in the temperament literature, with the former particularly salient in infancy and the latter noted as early as the first year of life. This study represents a meta-analysis utilizing Infant Behavior Questionnaire-Revised (IBQ-R) data collected across multiple laboratories (N = 4438) to overcome limitations of smaller samples in elucidating links among temperament, age, and gender in early childhood. Algorithmic modeling techniques were leveraged to discern the extent to which the 14 IBQ-R subscale scores accurately classified participating children as boys (n = 2,298) and girls (n = 2,093), and into three age groups: youngest (< 24 weeks; n = 1,102), mid-range (24 to 48 weeks; n = 2,557), and oldest (> 48 weeks; n = 779). Additionally, simultaneous classification into age and gender categories was performed, providing an opportunity to consider the extent to which gender differences in temperament are informed by infant age. Results indicated that overall age group classification was more accurate than child gender models, suggesting that age-related changes are more salient than gender differences in early childhood with respect to temperament attributes. However, gender-based classification was superior in the oldest age group, suggesting temperament differences between boys and girls are accentuated with development. Fear emerged as the subscale contributing to accurate classifications most notably overall. This study leads infancy research and meta-analytic investigations more broadly in a new direction as a methodological demonstration, and also provides most optimal comparative data for the IBQ-R based on the largest and most representative dataset to date.

Moderating effects of environmental stressors on the development of attention to threat in infancy.

An attention bias to threat has been linked to psychosocial outcomes across development, including anxiety (Pérez-Edgar, K., Bar-Haim, Y., McDermott, J. M., Chronis-Tuscano, A., Pine, D. S., & Fox, N. A. (2010). Attention biases to threat and behavioral inhibition in early childhood shape adolescent social withdrawal. Emotion (Washington, D.C.), 10(3), 349). Although some attention biases to threat are normative, it remains unclear how these biases diverge into maladaptive patterns of emotion processing for some infants. Here, we examined the relation between household stress, maternal anxiety, and attention bias to threat in a longitudinal sample of infants tested at 4, 8, and 12 months. Infants were presented with a passive viewing eye-tracking task in which angry, happy, or neutral facial configurations appeared in one of the four corners of a screen. We measured infants' latency to fixate each target image and collected measures of parental anxiety and daily hassles at each timepoint. Intensity of daily parenting hassles moderated patterns of attention bias to threat in infants over time. Infants exposed to heightened levels of parental hassles became slower to detect angry (but not happy) facial configurations compared with neutral faces between 4 and 12 months of age, regardless of parental anxiety. Our findings highlight the potential impact of the environment on the development of infants' early threat processing and the need to further investigate how early environmental factors shape the development of infant emotion processing.

When do children avoid infection risks: Lessons for schools during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The physical closing of schools because of COVID-19 has disrupted both student learning and family logistics. There is significant pressure for in-person learning to remain open for all children. However, as is expected with outbreaks of novel infections, vaccines and other pharmaceutical therapeutics may not be instantly available. This raises serious public health questions about the risks to children and society at large. The best protective measures for keeping young children in school focus on behaviors that limit transmission. It is therefore critical to understand how we can engage children in age-appropriate ways that will best support their ability to adhere to protocols effectively. Here, we synthesize published studies with new results to investigate the earliest ages at which children form an understanding of infection risk and when they can translate that understanding effectively to protective action.

Natural Variability in Parent-Child Puzzle Play at Home.

Here, we observed 3- to 4-year-old children (N=31) and their parents playing with puzzles at home during a zoom session to provide insight into the variability of the kinds of puzzles children have in their home, and the variability in how children and their parents play with spatial toys. We observed a large amount of variability in both children and parents' behaviors, and in the puzzles they selected. Further, we found relations between parents' and children's behaviors. For example, parents provided more scaffolding behaviors for younger children and parents' persistence-focused language was related to more child attempts after failure. Altogether, the present work shows how using methods of observing children at a distance, we can gain insight into the environment in which they are developing. The results are discussed in terms of how variability in spatial toys and spatial play during naturalistic interactions can help us contextualize the conclusions we draw from lab-based studies.

Psychometric properties of infant electroencephalography: Developmental stability, reliability, and construct validity of frontal alpha asymmetry and delta-beta coupling.

Resting-state electroencephalography (EEG) provides developmental neuroscientists a noninvasive view into the neural underpinnings of cognition and emotion. Recently, the psychometric properties of two widely used neural measures in early childhood-frontal alpha asymmetry and delta-beta coupling-have come under scrutiny. Despite their growing use, additional work examining how the psychometric properties of these neural signatures may change across infancy is needed. The current study examined the developmental stability, split-half reliability, and construct validity of infant frontal alpha asymmetry and delta-beta coupling. Infants provided resting-state EEG data at 8, 12, and 18 months of age (N = 213). Frontal alpha asymmetry and delta-beta coupling showed significant developmental change from 8 to 18 months. Reliability for alpha asymmetry, and alpha, delta, and beta power, individually, was generally good. In contrast, the reliability of delta-beta coupling scores was poor. Associations between frontal alpha asymmetry and approach tendencies generally emerged, whereas stronger (over-coupled) delta-beta coupling scores were associated with profiles of dysregulation and low inhibition. However, the individual associations varied across time and specific measures of interest. We discuss these findings with a developmental lens, highlighting the importance of repeated measures to better understand links between neural signatures and typical and atypical development.