Abstract
Adults’ caregiving responses toward infants may have important origins in the perception and processing of infant cues as well as the motivation to attend to these cues. Moreover, some biological processes, such as dopaminergic neurotransmission, may be crucially involved. Although infant stimuli are generally experienced as cute and rewarding, infants with a visible disability may be regarded much less favorably than others, perhaps dependent on differences in perception, motivation, and neural processing. The current study investigated effects of administered dopamine on the perceived attractiveness and neurophysiological indices of attention and processing (i.e., the P1, P2, and N170 components of the event-related potential) of infant faces with and without a cleft lip. No evidence for effects of dopamine was found, but we replicated the finding that the decreased attractiveness of infants with a cleft lip was mediated by decreased configural face processing (smaller N170 amplitudes), but not more general attentional and/or executive processing (P2). The current findings show once again the unfavorable consequences of a cleft lip, but also highlight the importance of combining and relating measures across various levels of analysis and underscore the importance of replication.
Highlights
Adults differ in the way they respond to infant signals
We found that effects of a facial abnormality on ratings of attractiveness of infant faces were mediated by decreased N170, but not P2 amplitudes [34]
Because none of our analyses revealed any effect of drug condition, variables were averaged across the dopamine and placebo conditions, and because P1 amplitudes in response to healthy infant faces and infant faces with a cleft lip were not significantly different, we did not include P1 amplitude as a mediator in this analysis
Summary
Adults differ in the way they respond to infant signals. Differences in the modality, timing, and appropriateness of caregiving responses may have important origins in the perception and processing of infant cues as well as the motivation to attend to those [47, 48]. As biological processes may be crucially involved, recent years have seen an impressive increase in attention for the neurobiological origins of human caregiving. Dopaminergic neurocircuitry has been critically implicated, in animal studies Hormonal effects on adults’ responses to infants and children are thought to occur, at least in part, through interactions with dopaminergic pathways Considering the above, the lack of administration studies focusing on dopamine is striking
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