Mothers’ pupillary responses to infant facial expressions
Date
2017-02-06
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
BioMed Central
Abstract
ENGLISH SUMMARY : Background: Human parental care relies heavily on the ability to monitor and respond to a child’s affective states. The current study examined pupil diameter as a potential physiological index of mothers’ affective response to infant
facial expressions.
Methods: Pupillary time-series were measured from 86 mothers of young infants in response to an array of photographic
infant faces falling into four emotive categories based on valence (positive vs. negative) and arousal (mild vs.
strong).
Results: Pupil dilation was highly sensitive to the valence of facial expressions, being larger for negative vs. positive
facial expressions. A separate control experiment with luminance-matched non-face stimuli indicated that the
valence effect was specific to facial expressions and cannot be explained by luminance confounds. Pupil response
was not sensitive to the arousal level of facial expressions.
Conclusions: The results show the feasibility of using pupil diameter as a marker of mothers’ affective responses to
ecologically valid infant stimuli and point to a particularly prompt maternal response to infant distress cues.
Description
CITATION: Yrttiaho, S., et al. 2017. Mothers’ pupillary responses to infant facial expressions. Behavioral and Brain Functions, 13:2, doi:10.1186/s12993-017-0120-9.
The original publication is available at https://behavioralandbrainfunctions.biomedcentral.com
The original publication is available at https://behavioralandbrainfunctions.biomedcentral.com
Keywords
Pupil (Eye) -- Physiological aspects, Pupillometrics, Emotion recognition, Facial expression, Mother and infant
Citation
Yrttiaho, S., et al. 2017. Mothers’ pupillary responses to infant facial expressions. Behavioral and Brain Functions, 13:2, doi:10.1186/s12993-017-0120-9.