Here's looking at you, kid: attention to infant emotional faces in mothers and non-mothers.

ABSTRACT: Infant facial cues play a critical role in eliciting care and nurturance from an adult caregiver. Using an attentional capture paradigm we investigated attentional processing of adult and infant emotional facial expressions in a sample of mothers (n = 29) and non-mothers (n = 37) to determine whether infant faces were associated with greater task interference. Responses to infant target stimuli were slower than adult target stimuli in both groups. This effect was modulated by parental status, such that mothers compared to non-mothers showed longer response times to infant compared to adult faces. Both groups also responded more slowly to emotional faces, an effect that was more marked for infant emotional faces. Finally, it was found that greater levels of mothers' self-reported parental d

SUBMITTER: Thompson-Booth C 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4352331 | biostudies-literature | 2014 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature