Abstract
Parent-to-child transmission of information processing biases to threat is a potential causal mechanism in the family aggregation of anxiety symptoms and traits. This study is the first to investigate the link between infants’ and parents’ attention bias to dynamic threat-relevant (versus happy) emotional expressions. Moreover, the associations between infant attention and anxiety dispositions in infants and parents were explored. Using a cross-sectional design, we tested 211 infants in three age groups: 5-to-7-month-olds (n = 71), 11-to-13-month-olds (n = 73), and 17-to-19-month-olds (n = 67), and 216 parents (153 mothers). Infant and parental dwell times to angry and fearful versus happy facial expressions were measured via eye-tracking. The parents also reported on their anxiety and stress. Ratings of infant temperamental fear and distress were averaged across both parents. Parents and infants tended to show an attention bias for fearful faces with marginally longer dwell times to fearful versus happy faces. Parents dwelled longer on angry versus happy faces, whereas infants showed an avoidant pattern with longer dwell times to happy versus angry expressions. There was a significant positive association between infant and parent attention to emotional expressions. Parental anxiety dispositions were not related to their own or their infant’s attention bias. No significant link emerged between infants’ temperament and attention bias. We conclude that an association between parental and infant attention may already be evident in the early years of life, whereas a link between anxiety dispositions and attention biases may not hold in community samples.
Highlights
Anxiety disorders are a highly prevalent cluster of mental illness (Remes et al, 2016) that runs in families
We aimed to answer the following research questions: 1. Are parental anxiety dispositions related to parental attention bias to threat? Based on earlier evidence in adult studies (Bar-Haim et al, 2007; van Bockstaele et al, 2014), we predicted that parents with higher levels of anxiety dispositions will show a stronger attention bias to threat-relevant emotional expressions as compared to happy expressions
We investigated the link between parental anxiety dispositions and parental attention biases to threat in a multi-level regression model (N = 216) with parental dwell times as the outcome variable, and the main effects of Emotion, parent gender, and parental anxiety dispositions along with all the two-way and three-way interactions between these three variables as predictors
Summary
Anxiety disorders are a highly prevalent cluster of mental illness (Remes et al, 2016) that runs in families Information-processing theories suggest that anxious individuals, compared to non-anxious individuals, tend to prioritize the processing of threat-relevant information over non-threat-relevant information This argument is supported by empirical evidence noting an attention bias to threat-related information in anxious adults (BarHaim et al, 2007; van Bockstaele et al, 2014) and, more recently, in anxious children (Abend et al, 2018), as compared to non-anxious adults or children. Evidence supports a bidirectional causal link between attention biases and anxiety in anxious children and adults (Abend et al, 2018; van Bockstaele et al, 2014) This process builds on normative developmental mechanisms as a growing body of evidence from infant studies finds that attention biases to threat emerge as part of typical development between the 5th and 7th month of life (for a review, see Leppänen & Nelson, 2012). The evidence so far is inconclusive on whether a direct link is observed between parental anxiety dispositions and infant attention bias in community samples
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