Infant visual preference for the mother's face and longitudinal associations with emotional reactivity in the first year of life

Abstract

Past research has focused on infants' visual preference for the mother's face, however it is still unknown how these responses change over time and what factors associate with such changes. A longitudinal study (N ~ 60) was conducted to investigate the trajectories of infant visual preference for the mother's face and how these are related to the development of emotional reactivity in the first year of life. Two face stimuli (i.e., the infant's mother and a consistent stranger face) were used in a visual preference task at 2 weeks, 4, 6, and 9 months of age. At each time point, mothers were asked to complete a measure of infant temperament via standardised questionnaires. Our results show that while at 2 weeks, 4 months and 9 months of age infants looked equally at both faces, infants at 6 months looked significantly longer at their mother's face. We also observed prospective associations with emotional reactivity variables so that infants who looked longer at the mother's face at 6 months showed higher falling reactivity, i.e. a better ability to recover from distress, at 9 months. We discuss these findings in light of the roles that both infant development and the caregiver play in emerging emotion regulation capacities during the first year of life.

Figure 1

Visual preference task protocol used at 2 weeks and 4 months (top) and at 6 and 9 months (bottom). The image is for illustrative purposes only.

Figure 2

Example of how eye depictions and gaze positions (black and grey circles) were used to assess gaze data quality. The image is for illustrative purposes only.

Figure 3

Trajectory of total looking time (in seconds) across stimuli (dotted line) and of looking time to mother (black line) and stranger face (grey line) stimuli at each age. A significant difference was found at 6 months.