Cross-cultural applicability of eye-tracking in assessing attention to emotional faces in preschool-aged children

Authors

Sara S Nozadi, Community Environmental Health Program, Health Sciences Center, Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences, University of New Mexico
Andrea Aguiar, Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Ruofei Du, Department of Biostatistics, University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences
Elizabeth A Enright, Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Susan L Schantz, Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Curtis Miller, Community Environmental Health Program, Health Sciences Center, Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences, University of New Mexico
Brandon Rennie, Department of Pediatrics, School of Medicine, University of New Mexico
Mallery Quetawki, Community Environmental Health Program, Health Sciences Center, Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences, University of New Mexico
Debra MacKenzie, Community Environmental Health Program, Health Sciences Center, Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences, University of New Mexico
Johnnye L Lewis, Community Environmental Health Program, Health Sciences Center, Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences, University of New Mexico

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

8-1-2023

Abstract

Humans show an attention bias toward emotional versus neutral information, which is considered an adaptive pattern of information processing. Deviations from this pattern have been observed in children with socially withdrawn behaviors, with most research being conducted in controlled settings among children from urban areas. The goal of the current study was to examine the cross-cultural applicability of two eye-tracking-based measures in assessing attention biases and their relations to children's symptoms of socially withdrawn behaviors in two independent and diverse samples of preschool children. The cross-cultural comparison was conducted between the Navajo Birth Cohort study (NBCS), an indigenous cohort with relatively low socioeconomic status (SES), and the Illinois Kids Development study (IKIDS), a primarily Non-Hispanic White and high SES cohort. Children in both cohorts completed eye-tracking tasks with pictures of emotional faces, and mothers reported on children's symptoms of socially withdrawn behaviors. Results showed that general patterns of attention biases were mostly the same across samples, reflecting heightened attention toward emotional versus neutral faces. The differences across two samples mostly involved the magnitude of attention biases. NBCS children were slower to disengage from happy faces when these emotional faces were paired with neutral faces. Additionally, socially withdrawn children in the NBCS sample showed a pattern of attentional avoidance for emotional faces. The comparability of overall patterns of attention biases provides initial support for the cross-cultural applicability of the eye-tracking measures and demonstrates the robustness of these methods across clinical and community settings. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Publication Title

Emotion (Washington, D.C.)

ISSN

1931-1516

Volume

23

Issue

5

First Page

1385

Last Page

1399

DOI

10.1037/emo0001124

Language (ISO)

English

Recommended Citation

Nozadi SS, Aguiar A, Du R, Enright EA, Schantz SL, Miller C, Rennie B, Quetawki M, MacKenzie D, Lewis JL. Cross-cultural applicability of eye-tracking in assessing attention to emotional faces in preschool-aged children. Emotion. 2023 Aug;23(5):1385-1399. doi: 10.1037/emo0001124. Epub 2022 Sep 15. PMID: 36107657; PMCID: PMC10014488.