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Abstract
To date, little is known about the neural underpinnings of social-emotional processes
in young children. The present study investigated the time course of children's ERP
responses to facial expression and personal familiarity, and the effect of these variables
on ERP measures of effortful attention in a Go-Nogo task. Dense-array EEG was collected
from 48 4-6-year-old children who were presented with pictures of their mothers' and
strangers' happy and angry faces. ERPs were scored following face presentation and
following a subsequent cue signaling a Go or Nogo response. Responses to face presentation
showed early perceptual components that were larger following strangers' faces, suggesting
facilitated rapid processing of personally important faces. A mid-latency frontocentral
negativity was greatest following angry mothers' faces, indicating increased attentional
monitoring and/or recognition memory evoked by an angry parent. Finally a right-lateralized
late positive component was largest following angry faces, suggesting extended processing
of negatively valenced social stimuli in general. Following the Go-Nogo response cue,
a right-lateralized mid-latency negativity thought to measure effortful attention
was larger in Nogo than Go trials, and following angry than happy faces, possibly
reflecting increased effortful control required in those conditions. The present study
suggests that overlapping but differentiated networks for both rapid and elaborative
processing of important socio-affective information are established by 4-6 years.
Moreover, the extended spatial and temporal distribution of components suggests a
pattern of response to social stimuli in which more rapid processes may index personal
familiarity, whereas temporally extended processes are sensitive to affective valence
on both familiar and unfamiliar faces.