Probing the origins of approach and avoidance processes: brain, behavioral, and contextual factors

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The ability to appropriately match an emotional response to cues in the environment begins developing during infancy and is critical to mental health and well-being throughout the life span. Infants learn to approach positive stimuli, such as smiling at happy faces, and avoid dangerous or threatening stimuli, such as turning away from angry faces. The goal of the proposed research is to understand the brain basis of approach and avoidance processes during infancy and the role of parent-child interactions in how those processes develop into childhood. This research will advance our understanding of approach and avoidance in the brain and how interactions between parents and infants influence their development. This proposed research will bring together early childhood specialists, students, parents and researchers to build a community around the study of early brain and cognitive development. The study will measure approach and avoidance behaviors in 6- to 12-month-old infants by observing their responses to positive and fearful stimuli and by parent-report of infants’ behavior in their home. The study will follow these children until they are age 4 when approach and avoidance behaviors as well as children’s decision-making will be measured. At both points in development, the study will record children’s brain activity using electroencephalography (EEG), a technique used to record the brain’s electrical activity to understand how individual differences in brain activity are related to development of approach and avoidance as well as how parent-child interactions might influence them. The proposed research will provide a new understanding of how approach and avoidance processes are shaped in early development and may shed light on how we can help people develop healthy emotion regulation beginning in infancy.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.