Abstract
The temperament profile Behavioral Inhibition (BI) is a strong predictor of internalizing behaviors in childhood. Patterns of attention towards or away from threat are a commonality of both BI and internalizing behaviors. Attention biases are traditionally measured with computer tasks presenting affective stimuli, which can lack ecological validity. Recent studies suggest that naturalistic visual attention need not mirror findings from computer tasks, and, more specifically, children high in BI may attend less to threats in naturalistic tasks. Here, we characterized latent trajectories of naturalistic visual attention over time to a female stranger, measured with mobile eye tracking, among kindergarteners oversampled for BI. Group-based trajectory modeling (GBTM) revealed two latent trajectories: 1) high initial orienting to the stranger, gradual decay, and recovery, and 2) low initial orienting and continued avoidance. Higher probability of membership to the “avoidant” group was linked to greater report of internalizing behaviors. We demonstrate the efficacy of mobile eye tracking in quantifying naturalistic patterns of visual attention to social novelty, as well as the importance of naturalistic measures of attention in characterizing socioemotional risk factors.
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Data Availability
Video data from consenting participants are available on Databrary. The data that support the findings of this study, as well as accompanying code, are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request. Please contact Kelley Gunther at keg44@psu.edu.
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Funding
This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship under Grant No. DGE1255832 (to KEG), by the NIMH National Research Service Award F31-MH121035 (to AV) and by R21-MH111980 (to KPE).
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Gunther, K.E., Fu, X., MacNeill, L. et al. Profiles of Naturalistic Attentional Trajectories Associated with Internalizing Behaviors in School-Age Children: A Mobile Eye Tracking Study. Res Child Adolesc Psychopathol 50, 637–648 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10802-021-00881-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10802-021-00881-2