Neural sensitivity to trustworthiness cues from realistic face images is associated with temperament: An electrophysiological study with 6-month-old infants

ABSTRACT

Discriminating facial cues to trustworthiness is a fundamental social skill whose developmental origins are still debated. Prior investigations used computer-generated faces, which might fail to reflect infants’ face processing expertise. Here, Event-Related Potentials (ERPs) were recorded in Caucasian adults (N = 20, 7 males, M age = 25.25 years) and 6-month-old infants (N = 21, 10 males) in response to variations in trustworthiness intensity expressed by morphed images of realistic female faces associated with explicit trustworthiness judgments (Study 1). Preferential looking behavior in response to the same faces was also investigated in infants (N = 27, 11 males) (Study 2). ERP results showed that both age groups distinguished subtle stimulus differences, and that interindividual variability in neural sensitivity to these differences were associated with infants’ temperament. No signs of stimulus differentiation emerged from infants’ looking behavior. These findings contribute to the understanding of the developmental origins of human sensitivity to social cues from faces by extending prior evidence to more ecological stimuli and by unraveling the mediating role of temperament.

KEYWORDS:

• Faces
• trustworthiness
• infancy
• event-related potentials
• looking preference
• temperament

Acknowledgments

The authors thank Carlo Toneatto for programming the experiments and Veronica Gaetani, Michelle Giraud and Melissa Savoldi for help in testing participants.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Disclosure of interest

The authors report no conflict of interest.

Data availability statement.

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

Supplemental data

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed here.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by a PhD Scholarship from the Italian Minister of University and Research to the first author, and a grant from the Università di Milano-Bicocca to the last author [2017-ATE-0566].