Abstract
To examine the ontogeny of emotion—attention interactions, we investigated whether infants exhibit adult-like biases in automatic and voluntary attentional processes towards fearful facial expressions. Heart rate and saccadic eye movements were measured from 7-month-old infants (n = 42) while viewing non-face control stimuli, and neutral, happy, and fearful facial expressions flanked after 1000 ms by a peripheral distractor. Relative to neutral and happy expressions, fearful expressions resulted in a greater cardiac deceleration response during the first 1000 ms of face-viewing and in a relatively long-lasting suppression of face-to-distractor saccades. The results suggest that the neural architecture for the integration of emotional significance with automatic attentional orienting as well as more voluntary attentional prioritization processes is present early in life.
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