1,721,008 research outputs found
Past and present experiences with maternal touch affect infants' attention toward emotional faces
No full textMaternal touch is considered crucial in regulating infants' internal states when facing unknown or distressing situations. Here, we explored the effects of maternal touch on 7-month-old infants' preferences towards emotions. Infants' looking times were measured through a two-trial preferential looking paradigm, while infants observed dynamic videos of happy and angry facial expressions. During the observation, half of the infants received an affective touch (i.e., stroke), while the other half received a non-affective stimulation (i.e., fingertip squeeze) from their mother. Further, we assessed the frequency of maternal touch in the mother-infant dyad through The Parent-Infant Caregiving Touch Scale (PICTS). Our results have shown that infants' attention to angry and happy facial expressions varied as a function of both present and past experiences with maternal touch. Specifically, in the affective touch condition, as the frequency of previous maternal affective tactile care increased (PICTS), the avoidance of angry faces decreased. Conversely, in the non-affective touch condition, as the frequency of previous maternal affective tactile care increased (PICTS), the avoidance of angry faces increased as well. Thus, past experience with maternal affective touch is a crucial predictor of the regulatory effects that actual maternal touch exerts on infants' visual exploration of emotional stimuli
Lo sviluppo percettivo e motorio
No full textL’edizione aggiornata e riveduta del manuale si rivolge agli studenti dei corsi di laurea che promuovono una conoscenza critica, aggiornata e rigorosa della psicologia dello sviluppo contemporanea ed è corredata di prove per l’autovalutazione dell’apprendimento e di slide utili per la didattica disponibili online.Il volume costituisce un utile riferimento anche per i professionisti dell’età evolutiva che desiderino acquisire informazioni aggiornate sui principali risultati delle ricerche empiriche contemporanee, sugli strumenti di valutazione, nonché su alcuni tra i più accreditati modelli di intervento per la famiglia e l’età evolutiva. Caratteristica peculiare del testo è il confronto tra lo sviluppo tipico e atipico, con un’attenzione ad ambiti evolutivi meno “convenzionali”, come l’autismo, i disturbi dell’apprendimento, l’adozione, e alle loro implicazioni in termini di conoscenze teoriche e modelli di intervento. Ogni capitolo presenta un argomento – percezione, attenzione, sviluppo motorio, sviluppo del cervello, memoria, cognizione,linguaggio, sviluppo morale e sviluppo socio-emotivo – e lo declina nelle sue caratteristiche di tipicità e atipicità. Completano la trattazione un capitolo specificamente dedicato ai metodi, uno ai contesti dello sviluppo e uno alla valutazione e agli interventi indirizzati all'età evolutiva
Newborns’ ability to match non-speech audio-visual information in the absence of temporal synchrony
No full textMultisensory experiences crucially contribute to the development of infants’ ability to match audio-visual (A-V) information. This study investigated two-day-old newborns’ ability to bind non-verbal, naturally occurring, experienced A-V stimuli. Our results demonstrate that, when presented with experienced stimuli (yawns and hiccups) within an intermodal matching procedure, 2-days-old newborns matched not only synchronous (Experiment 1) but also asynchronous A-V information (Experiment 2). Conversely, no evidence of A-V association was found when unexperienced stimuli, such as a linguistic sound (syllable/ba/) (Experiment 3), were presented in asynchrony. The possible role of sensorimotor experience in the early emergence of intersensory abilities is discussed
It's Safe to Look: Maternal Touch Affects Infants’ Fear Bias
Get PDFTouch is an extraordinary sensory, communicative, and affective experience that has cascading positive effects on infants’ socio-emotional development and neurobiological functioning. This study aims to explore whether maternal touch can influence infants’ well-known attentional biases toward fearful facial expressions. Visual behaviour of 7-month-old infants was measured through an eye-tracker while they were presented with an overlap task in which a central emotional face (happy, neutral, and fearful) was followed by a peripheral distractor. During the task, infants were randomly assigned to two experimental groups. In one group, the mother kept the hand on the infant's lap (Touch group, N = 24), while in another group, the mother was present but not in tactile contact with the infant (No-Touch condition, N = 24). Also, the frequency of spontaneous maternal touch was assessed during mother-infant free-play interaction. Results showed an overall increase in the proportion of looking times (PTs) toward the fear stimulus compared to the other emotional stimuli. Further, only the group of infants that were in tactile contact with their mothers showed slower disengagement times (DTs) from fearful faces compared to happy and neutral emotions. Finally, in the No-Touch condition, infants who experienced more regulatory touch (massages and caresses) when interacting with their mother showed increased attention toward threatening (Fearful faces) and ambiguous (Neutral faces) emotional signals. Vice versa, increased frequency with other forms of touch (i.e., dynamic and static) during the interaction was associated with decreased attention toward the negative and neutral facial expressions. Our findings suggest that maternal touch provides a relevant communicative signal to the infant that indicates that it is safe to process fearful stimuli, favoring infants’ knowledge and learning of their social world
Skin conductance reveals the early development of the unconscious processing of emotions
No full textThe ability to rapidly distinguish between positive and negative facial expressions of emotions is critical for adaptive social behaviour. Increasing evidence has shown that emotions can be processed even at an unconscious level in adults. Yet, very little is still known about the early ontogeny of the unconscious processing of emotional signals conveyed by faces. Here, we investigated the processing of subliminally presented face emotional stimuli in infants as young as 3-4 months of age and sought to clarify its neural underpinnings by exploring the role of the autonomic nervous system. Using a visual preference paradigm, Experiment 1 determined the visibility threshold for happy and angry faces and established that infants detected both happy and angry faces at 200- but not at 100 msec. By measuring skin conductance response (SCR), Experiment 2 showed that the autonomic nervous system of infants reacted to both subliminally (100 msec) and supraliminally (200 msec) presented face expressions of emotions, and that SCR were higher for angry than happy facial expressions. Results revealed that 3-4 month-old infants respond to positive and negative emotions even at an unconscious level, but also show that angry faces possess an intrinsic alerting characteristics, suggestive of an adaptive meaning of the physiological response. Findings are discussed in terms of subcortical learning of emotions, and the possibility that the amygdala may be involved in such process
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