Vanessa LoBue

Detecting the Snake in the Grass Attention to Fear-Relevant Stimuli by Adults and Young Children

Snakes are among the most common targets of fears and phobias. In visual detection tasks, adults detect their presence more rapidly than the presence of other kinds of visual stimuli. We report evidence that very young children share this attentional bias. In three experiments, preschool children and adults were asked to find a single target picture among an array of eight distractors. Both the children and the adults detected snakes more rapidly than three types of nonthreatening stimuli (flowers, frogs, and caterpillars). These results provide the first evidence of enhanced visual detection of evolutionarily relevant threat stimuli in young children.

Superior detection of threat-relevant stimuli in infancy

The ability to quickly detect potential threat is an important survival mechanism for humans and other animals. Past research has established that adults have an attentional bias for the detection of threat-relevant stimuli, including snakes and spiders as well as angry human faces. Recent studies have documented that preschool children also detect the presence of threatening stimuli more quickly than various non-threatening stimuli. Here we report the first evidence that this attentional bias is present even in infancy. In two experiments, 8- to 14-month-old infants responded more rapidly to snakes than to flowers and more rapidly to angry than to happy faces. These data provide the first evidence of enhanced visual detection of threat-relevant stimuli in infants and hence offer especially strong support for the existence of a general bias for the detection of threat in humans.

More than Just Another Face in the Crowd: Superior Detection of Threatening Facial Expressions in Children and Adults.

Threatening facial expressions can signal the approach of someone or something potentially dangerous. Past research has established that adults have an attentional bias for angry faces, visually detecting their presence more quickly than happy or neutral faces. Two new findings are reported here. First, evidence is presented that young children share this attentional bias. In five experiments, young children and adults were asked to find a picture of a target face among an array of eight distracter faces. Both age groups detected threat-relevant faces--angry and frightened--more rapidly than non-threat-relevant faces (happy and sad). Second, evidence is presented that both adults and children have an attentional bias for negative stimuli overall. All negative faces were detected more quickly than positive ones in both age groups. As the first evidence that young children exhibit the same superior detection of threatening facial expressions as adults, this research provides important support for the existence of an evolved attentional bias for threatening stimuli.

Pretty in pink: The early development of gender-stereotyped colour preferences

Parents commonly dress their baby girls in pink and their baby boys in blue. Although there is research showing that children prefer the colour blue to other colours (regardless of gender), there is no evidence that girls actually have a special preference for the colour pink. This is the focus of the current investigation. In a large cross-sectional study, children aged 7 months to 5 years were offered eight pairs of objects and asked to choose one. In every pair, one of the objects was always pink. By the age of 2, girls chose pink objects more often than boys did, and by the age of 2.5, they had a significant preference for the colour pink over other colours. At the same time, boys showed an increasing avoidance of pink. These results thus reveal that sex differences in young childrens preference for the colour pink involves both an increasing attraction to pink by young girls and a growing avoidance of pink by boys.

Threat Perception Across the Life Span: Evidence for Multiple Converging Pathways

Snakes and spiders are the objects of two of the most common fears and phobias throughout the world. In the lab, researchers have documented two interesting phenomena in adult humans and nonhuman primates: A propensity for the rapid association of snakes and spiders with fear, and a propensity for the rapid detection of these threatening stimuli. Here, we describe these perceptual biases for threat and highlight new work supporting their existence in infants and young children.

And along Came a Spider: An Attentional Bias for the Detection of Spiders in Young Children and Adults.

Spiders are among the most common targets of fears and phobias in the world. In visual search tasks, adults detect their presence more rapidly than other kinds of stimuli. Reported here is an investigation of whether young children share this attentional bias for the detection of spiders. In a series of experiments, preschoolers and adults were asked to find the single spider picture among an array of eight mushrooms or cockroaches or the reverse. Both children and adults detected the presence of spiders more rapidly than both categories of distracter stimuli. Furthermore, there was no difference between the detection of two neutral stimuli (cockroaches vs. mushrooms). These results provide the first evidence of enhanced visual detection of spiders in young children.

What's so special about slithering serpents? Children and adults rapidly detect snakes based on their simple features

Snakes are among the most common targets of fears and phobias around the world. In visual search tasks, both adults and young children have repeatedly been found to visually detect snakes more rapidly than other kinds of stimuli. An important question that remains unstudied is what accounts for humans’ rapid response to snakes? Here we suggest that specific features of snakes themselves lead to their rapid detection. The results of five experiments suggest that a snakes shape is the crucial factor in their rapid detection.

What's so scary about needles and knives? Examining the role of experience in threat detection

Snakes and spiders constitute a category of evolutionarily relevant stimuli that were recurrent and widespread threats to survival throughout human evolution. A large body of research has suggests that humans have an inborn bias to detect these stimuli more rapidly than non-threatening stimuli. However, recent research has demonstrated that adults also show rapid detection of modern threat-relevant stimuli, such as knives and syringes. This suggests that experience may also lead to rapid detection of threatening stimuli. The research reported here is an investigation of whether young children have an attentional bias for the detection of two types of modern threat-relevant stimuli—one with which they have experience (syringes) versus one with which they do not (knives). As predicted, the children detected the presence of syringes more quickly than pens, but did not detect knives more quickly than spoons. These results provide strong support for multiple mechanisms in threat detection.

Young children's interest in live animals

Animals are important stimuli for humans, and for children in particular. In three experiments, we explored childrens affinity for animals. In Experiment 1, 11- to 40-month-old children were presented with a free-play session in which they were encouraged to interact with several interesting toys and two live animals - a fish and a hamster. Experiment 2 used the same methodology with 18- to 36-month-old children and two additional animals - a snake and a spider - to examine whether childrens behaviours would differ for benign and potentially threatening animals. Finally, in Experiment 3, a more controlled paired-preference paradigm was employed to assess 18- to 33-month-old childrens interactions with three live animals - a fish, hamster, and gecko - versus three physically similar toy animals. Across all three experiments, children interacted with the animals more often than with the toys. Further, they behaved differently towards the animals than the toys, talking about the animals more than the toys and asking more questions about them. The parents of the children also spent more time interacting with the animals, directing their childrens attention more towards the animals than the toys. This research supports the idea that humans have an affinity for animals that draws their attention to animals, even when attractive toys are present.

The Child Affective Facial Expression (CAFE) set: validity and reliability from untrained adults

Emotional development is one of the largest and most productive areas of psychological research. For decades, researchers have been fascinated by how humans respond to, detect, and interpret emotional facial expressions. Much of the research in this area has relied on controlled stimulus sets of adults posing various facial expressions. Here we introduce a new stimulus set of emotional facial expressions into the domain of research on emotional development—The Child Affective Facial Expression set (CAFE). The CAFE set features photographs of a racially and ethnically diverse group of 2- to 8-year-old children posing for six emotional facial expressions—angry, fearful, sad, happy, surprised, and disgusted—and a neutral face. In the current work, we describe the set and report validity and reliability data on the set from 100 untrained adult participants.