Multimodal processing of emotional information in 9-month-old infants II: Prenatal exposure to maternal anxiety

The ability to read emotional expressions from human face and voice is an important skill in our day-to-day interactions with others. How this ability develops may be influenced by atypical experiences early in life. Here, we investigated multimodal processing of fearful and happy face/voice pairs i...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Brain and cognition 2015-04, Vol.95, p.107-117
Main Authors: Otte, R.A., Donkers, F.C.L., Braeken, M.A.K.A., Van den Bergh, B.R.H.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Anxiety
Cerebral Cortex - physiology
Developmental origins of health and disease (DOBHAD)
Electroencephalography
Emotion perception
Emotions - physiology
Event-related potential (ERP)
Evoked Potentials
Facial Expression
Facial Recognition - physiology
Fear
Female
Humans
Infant
Male
Multimodal processing
Pregnancy
Pregnancy Complications - psychology
Voice
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Summary:The ability to read emotional expressions from human face and voice is an important skill in our day-to-day interactions with others. How this ability develops may be influenced by atypical experiences early in life. Here, we investigated multimodal processing of fearful and happy face/voice pairs in 9-month-olds prenatally exposed to maternal anxiety, using event-related potentials (ERPs). Infants were presented with emotional vocalisations (happy/fearful) preceded by emotional facial expressions (happy/fearful). The results revealed larger P350 amplitudes in response to fearful vocalisations when infants had been exposed to higher levels of anxiety, regardless of the type of visual prime, which may indicate increased attention to fearful vocalisations. A trend for a positive association between P150 amplitudes and maternal anxiety scores during pregnancy may suggest these infants are more easily aroused by and extract features more thoroughly from fearful vocalisations as well. These findings are compatible with the hypothesis that prenatal exposure to maternal anxiety is related to more extensive processing of fear-related stimuli.
ISSN:0278-2626
1090-2147
DOI:10.1016/j.bandc.2014.12.001