CAREER: Using Novel Neural Measures to Investigate Attention Bias

Attention is an important aspect of cognition. Attention to emotional information, in particular, shapes how individuals develop and, in some cases, contributes to mental health problems. From infancy, individuals preferentially attend to emotionally salient information, such as information in facial expressions. However, how these patterns of attention develop during the first months of life, a period of rapid brain growth, remains poorly understood. Understanding these attention processes could improve early identification of risk for mental health problems and inform the prevention of disorders such as anxiety. Using new measures of infant brain activity, this project seeks to examine how infants process emotional information, how attention to this information emerges and changes across development, and how these attention processes relate to later developmental outcomes. Broader impacts include expanding training in neuroscience and, in partnership with participants, creating science-based parenting resources for families and the broader public to promote science literacy. This project uses a longitudinal design and novel electroencephalography (EEG) measures to characterize developmental trajectories of attention to emotional information in facial expressions and their relations to emotional development. The project aims to (1) examine developmental changes in attention across infancy and (2) test how brain-based measures of attention relate to established early risk factors for anxiety, including infant temperament and maternal anxiety. The project integrates measures of infant brain activity with behavioral observations, parent reports of maternal mental health and infant socioemotional development, as well as a novel ecological momentary assessment protocol to capture mothers’ moment-to-moment emotional experiences in daily life. This work aims to advance understanding of early attention processes and their neural bases, with implications for identifying risk and resilience, as well as broader theories of how infant and contextual factors shape brain development. 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.