Pupillary and Attentional Responses to Infant Facial Expressions in Mothers Across Socioeconomic Variations

Baby don't cry: Unconscious sensitivity to sad baby faces

Infant cues are known to play a crucial role in eliciting caregiving responses, making them essential for survival and development of offspring. Yet, it is still unknown whether infant faces may attract adults' attention when presented under the level of consciousness. Using a disengagement task and an eye-tracker procedure, this study investigated whether the subliminal exposure to emotional baby vs adult faces affects mothers' (N = 57) and non-mothers' (N = 57) attention disengagement. Independently from their parental status, women had longer saccadic latencies following subliminal sad baby faces, compared to happy baby faces and sad adult faces. These findings indicate that infants' sad facial expressions below the threshold of conscious perception can induce an attentional bias, thus representing a highly salient social signal for the human species.

Review of studies applying Bronfenbrenner's bioecological theory in international and intercultural education research

The Russian-born American psychologist Bronfenbrenner's bioecological perspective on human development is an ideal framework for understanding how individuals negotiate the dynamic environment and their own identities in international and intercultural education settings. However, a review of the current literature shows that most studies either adopted the earlier version of the theory (i.e., the ecological systems theory) or inadequately presented the most recent developments of the bioecological model (i.e., the process-person-context-time model). The construct of proximal processes-the primary mechanisms producing human development according to Bronfenbrenner-has seldom been explored in depth, which means the true value of bioecological theory is largely underrepresented in international and intercultural education research. This article first presents a review of studies that adopt Bronfenbrenner's theory and then offers future directions for the scope and design of international and intercultural education research.

Individual differences in pupil dilation to others' emotional and neutral eyes with varying pupil sizes

Sensitivity to others' emotional signals is an important factor for social interaction. While many studies of emotional reactivity focus on facial emotional expressions, signals such as pupil dilation which can indicate arousal, may also affect observers. For example, observers' pupils dilate when viewing someone with dilated pupils, so-called pupillary contagion. Yet it is unclear how pupil size and emotional expression interact as signals. Further, examining individual differences in emotional reactivity to others can shed light on its mechanisms and potential outcomes. In the current study, adults' (N = 453) pupil size was assessed while they viewed images of the eye region of individuals varying in emotional expression (neutral, happy, sad, fearful, angry) and pupil size (large, medium, small). Participants showed pupillary contagion regardless of the emotional expression. Individual differences in demographics (gender, age, socioeconomic status) and psychosocial factors (anxiety, depression, sleep problems) were also examined, yet the only factor related to pupillary contagion was socioeconomic status, with higher socioeconomic status predicting less pupillary contagion for emotionally-neutral stimuli. The results suggest that while pupillary contagion is a robust phenomenon, it can vary meaningfully across individuals.