Temperament and its Effects on Visual Attention to Emotional Faces

This study investigated the effects of temperament on visual attention to emotional faces. In order to examine this research question, a sample of 48 children ages 3to 9-years-old viewed faces depicting angry, fearful, happy, or neutral emotions on an eye-tracking computer. This visual attention data was combined with a parent-reported measure of temperament in order to determine correlations between the two. Results showed no statistically significant correlations between temperament and looking behavior, despite these correlations being significant when the same tasks were administered to adults. Overall, these results suggest that the participants did not display temperament effects in visual attention of emotional faces, thus implying that this pattern may emerge beyond middle childhood. Temperament and Visual Attention 3 Temperament and its Effects on How Children View Emotional Faces The effect of personality on how individuals view the world is an area that has been studied extensively in the psychological literature. Across the field, personality is characterized as an aspect of several pathways through which human behavior is modified, resulting in individual differences (Eysenck, 1970; McCrae & Costa 2003). The argument to the converse is that behavior varies not wholly due to personality, but in relation to situational factors surrounding the individual at the time that the behavior is displayed (Mischel 1977; Vernon 1964). It is important, therefore, to investigate the nature ofthe context/personality relationship on the social behaviors of humans (Mischel 2004; Mischel, Shoda, & Mendoza-Denton 2002). My intention was to extend current knowledge concerning personality as a moderator for social perception, in order to apply this knowledge to children. One explanation of the interaction between context and personality, the TraitCongruency Theory, states that the information one seeks out is the information which best fits the traits represented within one's personality (Bargh, Lombardi, & Higgins 1988; King & Sorrentino 1988). In support of this position, Segerstrom (2001) found that those participants higher in the optimism trait were more likely to give greater attention to positive words, whereas the converse was true for those lower in optimism. A similar effect was reported by Isaacowitz (2006), who found that participants higher in optimism were more likely than participants who were high in pessimism to avert their gaze from unpleasant images. These studies suggest that personality traits are correlated with how humans direct their attention. Moreover, the correlation tends to move towards stimuli which provide confirmatory evidence for their traits, and away from those which could lead to disconfirmation. Temperament and Visual Attention 4 Another, more biological, aspect of personality is one's temperament. While temperament is thought to be largely innate, some environmental factors have been shown to playa role in its development (Thomas & Chess, 1977). The academic discussion of this construct is, for the most part, concentrated on the stable elements of personality which effect social behavior (Kagan, 1994; Rothbart, Ahadi, Hershey, & Fisher, 2001). The personality trait of neuroticism is often referred to as negative affectivity in the temperament literature, and is highly correlated with anxiety and depression. Making an extension from Segerstrom's 2001 finding, one might expect that those high in neuroticism or negative affectivity will pay more attention to emotionally negative information than would people lower in neuroticism. Although this finding by Segerstrom has not been verified in any exact replications, a conceptual replication has recently been completed (Perlman, Morris, Vander Wyk, Green, Doyle, & Pelphrey, 2009). In this study, adult participants were presented with life-size images of emotional faces and were allowed to view them freely on an eye-tracking computer. Those participants who ranked higher in the trait of neuroticism spent a greater percentage of time looking at the eyes of the face than did those who ranked lower in neuroticism. This effect was particularly evident when the emotion of the presented stimulus was that of fear. A follow-up study (Perlman & Pelphrey, in press) in adults showed a similar pattern of data. In this study, an array of various objects, including emotional faces, covered the screen of the eye-tracking computer. This array of objects was meant to more realistically represent how persons view the world as a mixture of objects and people spread throughout our visual field. Participants classified as having high neuroticism spent a greater proportion of time looking at the faces on the screen than did those with low neuroticism. In fact, the high neuroticism participants spent Temperament and Visual Attention 5 very little time viewing objects in the array other than the face. As in the previous study, this result was particularly powerful within the condition presenting the fear emotion. Though this effect has been shown in past studies, it is necessary to extend the finding to children. Because of the biological, innate nature of temperament, any effects that one's temperament has on his or her perception are likely to exist starting in early childhood. This study seeks to examine the development ofthis phenomenon from early childhood through preadolescence. Drawing from the results of previous studies, the hypotheses of the current study were twofold. First, it was hypothesized that children with higher scores on neuroticismpredictive scales would exhibit longer fixation durations towards the eye region of emotional faces. Second, when given the option to look at either a face or any number of other objects in the visual field, children with higher scores on neuroticism-predictive scales were predicted to fixate on faces longer than children with lower scores on these scales. Methods Participants Participants in this research study were 48 children (20 girls, 28 boys) recruited from both The Children's School research preschool and through an internet advertisement. There were 24 younger children (MMonthsYoung = 43.83, SDMonthsYoung = 4.74) and 24 older children (MMonthsOld = 71.92, SDMonthsOld = 18.76). Grouping according to relative age was determined by a median split, with the young group ranging from 35 to 54 months and the older children falling in an age range of 54 to 119 months. The participants were randomly assigned into one of two orders of presentation of stimuli, and viewed each of 80 slides on the eye-tracking computer. Three participants viewed only 40 of the 80 slides, refusing to continue the study after the first block of 40 pictures. Materials Temperament and Visual Attention 6 Materials for this study included 80 slides depicting either a life-sized face, or an array of 25 objects which included a small picture of a face (for examples of each type, see Appendix A and B respectively). Each life-sized face was 9 x 11.5 inches in size, and each array of objects filled the entire 17 inch LCD screen, with the individual objects and faces being approximately 3 inches square. Objects in the arrays were common, everyday objects such as umbrellas, shoes, and cars. Arrays each included a face expressing emotions such as anger, fear, and happiness, appearing in a different area of the screen each time a new array was presented. Each photographic slide was presented for 4 seconds, with a crosshair displayed for 1 second between the photographs. Slides were arranged in a pseudo-random order and then separated into two blocks. Eye tracking was completed using a 50 Hz infrared eye-tracking computer (T60, Tobii Technology). Looking behavior was characterized by calculating duration of fixation in specified areas of interest (AOIs). In the object arrays, these AOIs indicated the emotional face within the array and took up precisely 5.25% ofthe screen on all array trials. In the solitary face slides, AOIs were drawn for each of four regions: Eyes, Nose, Mouth, and Face. The duration oftime spent fixated on any given AOI was calculated independently, and then collapsed across emotions. Analyses were conducted in reference to the proportion of time spent looking at the AOI, compared to the total amount of time spent looking at the screen. This measure was taken in order to control for individual differences in total looking time caused by blinking or distraction from the stimuli. Temperament was measured by using the Children's Behavior Questionnaire Short Form (Rothbart 1996). This survey takes inventory of children's behavior patterns as described in several statements which parents rate on a scale from 1 (extremely untrue of your child) to 7 Temperament and Visual Attention 7 (extremely true of your child). These items are aggregated into several sub scale scores (i.e. Activity Level, Fear, Inhibitory Control). Parents completed the survey either at home prior to the child's participation (Children's School pool), or in the lab while their child was taking part in the eye-tracking portion of the study (other participants). Design This study investigated the effect of temperament on attention to emotional faces in children using a 2 (neuroticism) x 2 (age) between-subjects design. The neuroticism factor was defined using two levels high neuroticism and low neuroticism, as defined by a median split. The age factor had 2 levels, with participants grouped, via a median split, into categories of either younger child or older child. This study was conducted with all 80 slides arranged in two blocks and then presented in one of two orders, counterbalanced between subjects. Procedure Participants were tested by the experimenter using an eye-tracking computer. Participants were told that they would be "looking at some pictures," and to simply "look at them like you normally would. " Participants were shown two blocks of slides, each contain