Social referencing and the influence of parental affect on non-ambulatory infants

描述（由申请人提供）：背景：社会参照（SR）是指婴儿使用照顾者作为情感指南，帮助他们将模糊的情况解释为安全或威胁。了解SR可以提高我们对婴儿社会认知的认识，并建立发育障碍的早期标志。例如，患有自闭症的年龄较大的儿童不太可能将照顾者作为社会参考（瓦尔登，1993）。大多数研究都是在能走动的婴儿中进行的，这是经典SR范式的标准，因此忽略了年龄较小的婴儿。这阻碍了我们对情绪调节可能的早期机制的了解。除了推进婴儿社会情感发展的知识，拟议的研究将有助于开发一个新的研究范式，研究尚未走动的婴儿SR。宗旨和目标：拟议的研究将跟踪4至6个月大的SR的出现，并证明6个月大的孩子的情绪反应在模糊的情况下受到父母情绪（恐惧或喜悦）的影响。我们还将表明，6个月大的婴儿在明确的（即，令人害怕或有趣的）事件。我们假设，婴儿将反映父母的影响（恐惧/喜悦），通过各种形式（面部表情，行为的方法/避免，和心率）在模糊和明确的事件，并预测婴儿气质将缓和父母的情绪对婴儿的反应（婴儿的方法/避免，心率，和喜悦/恐惧）的影响。研究设计：60个4个月大的婴儿会看到父母面对普通和模棱两可/荒谬的事件，父母会以快乐或中立的态度回应。该程序将在5个月大时重复。在6个月大时，同样的婴儿会观察到父母呈现一个模糊的物体，同时以平衡的顺序用恐惧/喜悦的面部和声音线索做出反应。另外60个6个月大的婴儿将观察父母提出的潜在的可怕和有趣的物体，同时提供一致或不一致的情绪线索，在一个内科目的设计。在这两项研究中，将测量婴儿的SR、情感（消极/积极）、行为（回避/接近）和心率。婴儿性别和气质将作为调节变量进行研究。序贯分析（Bakeman & Gottman，1997）将被用来理解在父母-婴儿社会互动过程中婴儿情感反应的动态序列。 公共卫生相关性：这项研究可能会建立社会参照的早期影响，从而对确定发育障碍的早期标志物具有意义。它可以增加婴儿情绪调节的知识，包括情感障碍的风险。 紊乱

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Background: Social referencing (SR) refers to infants' use of caregivers as emotional guides to help them interpret ambiguous situations as safe or threatening. Understanding SR can advance our knowledge of infant social cognition and establish early markers of developmental disorders. For example, older children with autism are less likely to use caregivers as social referents (Walden, 1993). Most studies have been conducted with infants who are ambulatory, a criterion of the classic SR paradigm, therefore ignoring younger infants. This has hindered our knowledge of possible early mechanisms of emotion regulation. In addition to advancing knowledge of infant social-emotional development, the proposed studies will assist in developing a new research paradigm for studying SR in not-yet-ambulatory infants. Objective and Aims: The proposed studies will track the emergence of SR in 4-to 6- month-olds, as well as demonstrate that 6-month-olds' emotional responses are influenced by parental emotion (fear or joy) during ambiguous situations. We will also show that 6-month-olds rely more on parental emotion (fear or joy) than contextual cues during unambiguous (i.e., frightening or funny) events. We hypothesize that infants will mirror parents' affect (fear/joy) through a variety of modalities (facial expression, behavioral approach/avoidance, and heart rate) during both ambiguous and unambiguous events, and predict that infant temperament will moderate the effect of parental emotion on infants' responses (infant approach/avoidance, heart rate, and joy/fear). Research Design: Sixty 4-month-olds will watch a parent presented with ordinary and ambiguous/absurd events during which parents will respond with joy or neutrality. The procedure will be repeated at 5 months old. At 6-months, the same infants will observe a parent presented with an ambiguous object while responding with facial and vocal cues of fear/joy in counter-balanced order. Sixty additional 6-month-olds will observe a parent presented with potentially frightening and funny objects, while providing congruent or incongruent emotional cues in a within-subjects design. In both studies, infants' SR, affect (negative/positive), behavior (avoidance/approach), and heart rate will be measured. Infant gender and temperament will be investigated as moderating variables. Sequential analysis (Bakeman & Gottman, 1997) will be used to understand the dynamic sequence that underlies infant affective response during parent-infant social interaction. PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE: This research may establish the early influence of social referencing, and thus has implications for identifying an early marker of developmental disorders. It may increase knowledge of emotion regulation in infants, including risk for affective disorders.