Visual and behavioral responses to social and non-social threats: A multi-site replication.

Researchers have proposed that humans have evolved psychological mechanisms that facilitate the detection, rapid response, and subsequent avoidance of potential threats. However, some inconsistent results in the literature have called into question the robustness of these responses. Here, we sought to replicate previous findings on the rapid detection of both social (i.

Individual differences in developmental trajectories of affective attention and relations with competence and social reticence with peers.

This study examined individual differences in affective attention trajectories in infancy and relations with competence and social reticence at 24 months. Data collection spanned 2017 to 2021. Infants ( = 297, 53% White, 49% reported as assigned male at birth) recruited in South Central and Central Pennsylvania and Northern New Jersey provided eye-tracking data at five assessments.

The impact of household pets on children's daily lives: Differences in parent-child conversations and implications for children's emotional development.

Living with a pet is related to a host of socioemotional health benefits for children, yet few studies have examined the mechanisms that drive the relations between pet ownership and positive socioemotional outcomes. The current study examined one of the ways that pets may change the environment through which children learn and whether childhood pet ownership might promote empathy and prosocial behavior through parent-child conversations about emotions and mental states in the presence of a pet dog. Participants included 123 parent (118 mothers, four fathers) and child (65 female, 58 male, = 39.

Bi-directional relations between attention and social fear across the first two years of life.

This study examined longitudinal relations between attention and social fear across the first two years of life. Our sample consisted of 357 infants and their caregivers across three sites. Data was collected at 4, 8, 12, 18, and 24 months of age.

"It bites!": The transmission of negative information about snakes and spiders through a naturalistic picture book interaction.

Snakes and spiders are two of the most commonly feared animals worldwide, yet we know very little about the mechanisms by which such fears are acquired. We explored whether negative information about snakes and spiders from parents shapes children's fear beliefs. Study 1 included 27 parents (22 mothers, five fathers) and children (12 female, 15 male, = 5.

Developmental patterns of affective attention across the first 2 years of life.

This study examined patterns of attention toward affective stimuli in a longitudinal sample of typically developing infants (N = 357, 147 females, 50% White, 22% Latinx, 16% African American/Black, 3% Asian, 8% mixed race, 1% not reported) using two eye-tracking tasks that measure vigilance to (rapid detection), engagement with (total looking toward), and disengagement from (latency to looking away) emotional facial configurations. Infants completed each task at 4, 8, 12, 18, and 24 months of age from 2016 to 2020. Multilevel growth models demonstrate that, over the first 2 years of life, infants became faster at detecting and spent more time engaging with angry over neutral faces.

Moderating effects of environmental stressors on the development of attention to threat in infancy.

An attention bias to threat has been linked to psychosocial outcomes across development, including anxiety (Pérez-Edgar, K., Bar-Haim, Y., McDermott, J.

The importance of using multiple outcome measures in infant research.

Collecting data with infants is notoriously difficult. As a result, many of our studies consist of small samples, with only a single measure, in a single age group, at a single time point. With renewed calls for greater academic rigor in data collection practices, using multiple outcome measures in infant research is one way to increase rigor, and, at the same time, enable us to more accurately interpret our data.

Differences in Parent and Child Report on the Screen for Child Anxiety-Related Emotional Disorders (SCARED): Implications for Investigations of Social Anxiety in Adolescents.

Social anxiety typically emerges by adolescence and is one of the most common anxiety disorders. Many clinicians and researchers utilize the Screen for Child Anxiety Related Disorders (SCARED) to quantify anxiety symptoms, including social anxiety, throughout childhood and adolescence. The SCARED can be administered to both children and their parents, though reports from each informant tend to only moderately correlate.