Attention to Threat‐Related Faces in Preschool‐Aged Children and Associations With Fearful Temperament
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 6451896 |
|---|---|
| Authors | J A Moses (0000-0003-1280-5669, Department of Psychology, The Graduate Center City University of New York New York New York USA, corresponding author), Aviva Lehrfield (Department of Psychology, College of Staten Island City University of New York Staten Island New York USA), Adriana Lupo (Department of Psychology, College of Staten Island City University of New York Staten Island New York USA), Natalia Fraczek (Department of Psychology, College of Staten Island City University of New York Staten Island New York USA), J Wagner (0000-0002-6414-4279), Jennifer B Wagner (0000-0001-8174-0534, Department of Psychology, The Graduate Center City University of New York New York New York USA) |
| Year | 2025 |
| Volume | 34 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Publication date | 2025-06-06 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Social Development (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1467-9507 • E-ISSN: 0961-205X |
| Publisher | Wiley (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1111/sode.12810 |
| OpenAlex | W4411094011 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 49 |
The allocation of attention to threatening stimuli is an evolutionarily salient aspect of development; however, different factors such as clinical symptomology and temperamental traits may relate to alterations in these attentional patterns. The current study used eye‐tracking to investigate the attentional patterns of 60 preschool‐aged children ( M age = 48.3 months, SD = 10.4 months) as they viewed images of emotional faces, including both threat‐related expressions (angry, fearful) and nonthreat‐related expressions (happy, sad, neutral). Areas of interest were created for the eyes and mouth of all faces. The Children's Behavior Questionnaire was used to assess children's temperament, focusing on the Fearfulness subscale as it might relate to attentional patterns to threat‐related faces. Overall, results indicated differential attention based on the emotion being viewed, with both longer fixations and an increased number of fixations toward the fearful mouth as compared to angry. Correlational results showed that for attention to the angry face and eyes, children higher on temperamental fearfulness exhibited both shorter average fixation lengths and a greater number of fixations. These findings suggest that temperamental fearfulness might influence attention to threat‐related faces. This topic is important to explore because altered social attention may continue to reinforce fearfulness in those higher on this temperamental trait, and this in turn could give the child a higher likelihood of developing difficulties later in life
Attention span · Cognition · Developmental psychology · Facial expression · Fixation (population genetics · Personality · Temperament · Trait · Anxiety, Depression, Psychometrics, Treatment, Cognitive Processes · Child and Adolescent Psychosocial and Emotional Development · Obsessive-Compulsive Spectrum Disorders · Psychology · Social Psychology
Continuity and Discontinuity of Behavioral Inhibition and Exuberance
Development of Short and Very Short Forms of the Children's Behavior Questionnaire
The NimStim set of facial expressions
Measurement of Temperament in Infancy
Investigations of Temperament at Three to Seven Years
Developmental patterns of affective attention across the first 2 years of life
Threat-related attention bias in socioemotional development
Measuring the Development of Social Attention Using Free‐Viewing
Restricted Visual Scanpaths During Emotion Recognition in Childhood Social Anxiety Disorder
Fearful faces but not fearful eyes alone delay attention disengagement in 7-month-old infants
Maternal anxiety predicts attentional bias towards threat in infancy
Attention biases to threat and behavioral inhibition in early childhood shape adolescent social withdrawal
Don’t look at my teeth when I smile
Control networks and neuromodulators of early development
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |