Exploring emotional face processing in 5-month-olds: The relation with quality of parent-child interaction and spatial frequencies.

It is unclear whether infants differentially process emotional faces in the brain at 5 months of age. Contradictory findings of previous research indicate that additional factors play a role in this process. The current study investigated whether five-month-old infants show differential brain activity between emotional faces. Furthermore, we explored the relation between emotional face processing and (I) stimulus characteristics, specifically the spatial frequency content, and (II) parent, child, and dyadic qualities of interaction characteristics. Face-sensitive components (i.e., N290, P400, Nc) in response to neutral and fearful faces that contained only lower or higher spatial frequencies were assessed. Quality of parent-child interaction was assessed with the Manchester Assessment of Caregiver Infant Interaction (MACI). The results show that, as a full group, none of the components differed between emotional expressions. However, when splitting the group based on median MACI scores, infants who showed high quality of interaction (i.e., more attentiveness to caregiver, positive and negative affect, and liveliness) processed emotions differently, whereas infants who showed low quality did not. These results indicate that a sub-group of infants show differential emotional face processing at 5 months of age, which seem to relate to quality of their behavior during the parent-child interaction.

Is It Fear? Similar Brain Responses to Fearful and Neutral Faces in Infants with a Heightened Likelihood for Autism Spectrum Disorder.

Individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) show atypical processing of facial expressions. Research with autistic toddlers suggests that abnormalities in processing of spatial frequencies (SFs) contribute to such differences. The current event-related-potential (ERP) study investigated differences between 10-month-old infants with high- and low-likelihood for ASD in SF processing and in discrimination of fearful and neutral faces, filtered to contain specific SF. Results indicate no group differences in general processing of higher (HSF, detailed) and lower-SF (LSF, global) information. However, unlike low-likelihood infants, high-likelihood infants do not discriminate between facial expressions when either the LSF or HSF information is available. Combined with previous findings in toddlers, the current results indicate a developmental delay in efficient processing of facial expressions in ASD.

[Early referral of toddlers on suspicion of autism spectrum disorder]. / Vroege verwijzing van peuters bij vermoeden van een autismespectrumstoornis.

Early signs of autism spectrum disorders (ASS) can become apparent at the baby and toddler stage and a diagnosis of ASS can already be made at this age. In practice, however, it often takes many years before children with ASS are diagnosed and as a result these children miss the benefits of early intervention. Reticence in referral and diagnosis seems to arise from personal factors, diagnostic problems and organisational factors. Here we discuss these factors and stress the importance of referral of very young children on suspicion of ASS to paediatric and paediatric psychiatric institutions with expertise in diagnosing and treating young children.

Emotion processing in the infant brain: The importance of local information.

Facial expressions provide crucial information for an infant's social and cognitive development. Expressions are discriminated based on specific basic-level information, such as global and local information represented in spatial frequencies. Research in adults suggests that different neural pathways are involved in emotion discrimination, each activated by specific spatial frequency ranges. However, in infants the involvement of spatial frequencies in emotion discrimination is unknown. In the current study we investigated the effect of manipulating spatial frequency information in the face on emotion discrimination. Infants aged 9-10 months (N = 61) viewed happy, fearful, and neutral faces. The faces contained either lower (related to global information) or higher spatial frequencies (related to local information). Brain activity in response to the faces was measured with electroencephalography. Interest was in the effect of emotion and spatial frequency on the amplitude of the N290, P400, and Nc components. Amplitudes of the N290 and P400 components differed between happy versus fearful or neutral faces, although only in the higher, and not the lower, spatial frequency condition. Amplitude of the Nc components differed between happy versus fearful or neutral faces regardless of spatial frequency condition. These results reveal the importance of higher spatial frequencies for emotion discrimination in infants (particularly at the N290 and P400 components). We related these findings to current models on the neural basis of facial-emotion processing.

The Role of Global and Local Visual Information during Gaze-Cued Orienting of Attention.

Gaze direction is an important social communication tool. Global and local visual information are known to play specific roles in processing socially relevant information from a face. The current study investigated whether global visual information has a primary role during gaze-cued orienting of attention and, as such, may influence quality of interaction. Adults performed a gaze-cueing task in which a centrally presented face cued (valid or invalid) the location of a peripheral target through a gaze shift. We measured brain activity (electroencephalography) towards the cue and target and behavioral responses (manual and saccadic reaction times) towards the target. The faces contained global (i.e. lower spatial frequencies), local (i.e. higher spatial frequencies), or a selection of both global and local (i.e. mid-band spatial frequencies) visual information. We found a gaze cue-validity effect (i.e. valid versus invalid), but no interaction effects with spatial frequency content. Furthermore, behavioral responses towards the target were in all cue conditions slower when lower spatial frequencies were not present in the gaze cue. These results suggest that whereas gaze-cued orienting of attention can be driven by both global and local visual information, global visual information determines the speed of behavioral responses towards other entities appearing in the surrounding of gaze cue stimuli.