EFFECTIVE INFLUENCES ON INFANT REACTIVITY AND STARTLE

这项拟议的研究考察了生理和心理能力的早期发展。 婴儿期对情绪显著事件的行为反应。 惊吓增强研究的融合方法论 大鼠眨眼反射反应的情感调制及其动物实验研究 人类成年人被适应以调查婴儿的出现 对情感表达所传达的情感信息的敏感性。这个 方法使用突然的短暂的声学噪声爆发作为生理学的 《探寻》婴幼儿在观看情感类电影时的情感状态 表情丰富的面孔。像成年人一样，5个月大的婴儿表现出增强 消极的反射反应，相对于积极的和中性的， 充满感情的展示。拟议的研究包括三个领域： 问询。第一个横断面项目勾勒出 婴儿期早期的情感反射调节。发展中 反射大小和速度的变化与显性反射的变化的比较 行为反应将决定生理反应是否对 情感效价先于行为反应或与行为反应一致。这个 第二个目标是发现婴儿是否像成年人一样 情感信号加工的右脑偏侧化。这个 惊动眨眼范式非常适合于偏侧效应的研究 因为它可以比较左耳和右耳的反应 声学探头受情感呈现方式的影响 表情。期末专题评估个体差异。 对情感调节的敏感性。对此高度反应的婴儿 不熟悉的感觉事件也可能表现出更强的反射能力 消极情绪表现时的活动。这一发现将把 行为抑制方面稳定的个体差异，表现在 人类婴儿和儿童，在解剖学上有一条独特的恐惧途径 调制，在动物身上表现出来。这项拟议的研究预计将 阐明情绪信号感知的机制和 情绪反应的调节；两者在早期都是不可或缺的过程 心理发展。

The proposed research examines the early development of physiological and behavioral reactivity to emotionally-salient events during infancy. Convergent methodologies from studies of fear-potentiation of startle in animals and studies of affective modulation of blink reflex responses in human adults are adapted in order to investigate the emergence of infants' sensitivity to affective information conveyed by emotional expression. The methods employ a sudden brief acoustic noiseburst as a physiological probe" of the infant's affective state during the viewing of emotionally expressive faces. Like adults, 5-month-old infants show potentiated reflex responses during negative, relative to positive and neutral, affective displays. The proposed research incorporates three areas of inquiry. The first cross-sectional project delineates the development of affective reflex modulation during early infancy. Developmental comparison of changes in reflex size and speed with changes in overt behavioral responses will determine whether physiological responsivity to affective valence precedes or coincides with behavioral reactivity. The second objective is to discover whether infants, like adults, demonstrate right-hemisphere lateralization of affective signal processing. The startle blink paradigm is well-suited for the study of laterality effects because it allows comparison of how responses to left-ear and right-ear acoustic probes are influenced by the presentation of affective expressions. The final project assesses individual differences in sensitivity to affective modulation. Infants who are highly reactive to unfamiliar sensory events may also show greater potentiation of reflex activity during negative affective displays. This finding would link stable individual differences in behavioral inhibition, demonstrated in human infants and children, with an anatomically distinct pathway for fear modulation, demonstrated in animals. The proposed research is expected to clarify mechanisms involved in the perception of emotional signals and the regulation of emotional responses; both are integral processes in early psychological development.