Presence of parent, gender and emotional valence influences preschoolers' PFC processing of video stimuli

ABSTRACT

Unprecedented increases in child exposure to diverse videos has resulted in a need to understand how children process videos. While children show distinct activations in the prefrontal cortex (PFC) when presented with children's movies, multiple factors influence child neural response to screen media, namely, presence of a specific parent, gender differences and emotional valence. Sixty-two children (37 boys) aged 3 to 4 and their parents (33 mothers, 29 fathers) were recruited fora joint video task involving three video clips that varied in emotional valence while children's neural responses were measured using functional near-infrared spectroscopy. We found a significant interaction effect between emotional valence and gender. Children who engaged in joint-viewing with their fathers also showed significantly stronger PFC activity than with their mothers, regardless of emotional valence of video. Our findings suggest how, at a PFC level, different factors interact and influence the joint-viewing experience amongst parent–child dyads.

KEYWORDS:

• Prefrontal cortex
• preschool
• fNIRS
• videos
• gender
• parent

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Acknowledgments

We would like to thank other research members of the Social and Affective Neuroscience lab for their assistance in this work. Conceptualization was done by A.A. and G.E.; analysis by A.B.; investigation by J.R.D., J.P.M.B., A.A., M.L., G.G. and G.E.; data curation by A.A. and A.B.; writing – original draft preparation by J.R.D., J.P.M.B. and A.A.; writing – review and editing by A.A., M.L., G.G. and G.E.; visualization by J.R.D., J.P.M.B., A.A. and A.B.; and funding acquisition by A.A. and G.E.

Disclosure statement

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

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the 2015 NAP Start-up Grant M4081597 (GE) from Nanyang Technological University Singapore and the Ministry of Education – Singapore Tier-1 Grant (GE). This research was also supported by a Research Grant Award from the Singapore Children’s Society (A.A.).

Notes on contributors

Justin R. Durnford

J.R. Durnford and J.P.M. Balagtas are current Psychology undergraduates at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.

Atiqah Azhari

A. Azhari and G. Gabrieli are current PhD candidates in Psychology.

Mengyu Lim

M. Lim is currently a Project Officer at the Social and Affective Neuroscience Lab, Nanyang Technological University.

Andrea Bizzego

A. Bizzego, PhD is a research fellow at the University of Trento.

Gianluca Esposito

G. Esposito, PhD is an Associate Professor with joint appointments in Nanyang Technological University and University of Trento.