About This Project

Most adults, when looking at emotional images, show similar brain waves. Adults with mental disorders show different waves.

We don't know what preschooler's brainwaves look like (because no one had created a picture set that could be used with preschoolers). Our lab has created a set! This study will explore how preschoolers process emotions neurally. If consistent brain waves are found, we can begin to look at clinical populations, which could lead to early detection of mental illness.

Ask the Scientists

What is the context of this research?

Over the past decades, a substantial body of research has been carried out exploring adult subjects' reactions to affective images. These studies have used affective pictures to elicit emotional experiences from participants (e.g., Greenwald, Cook, & Lang, 1989; Lang, Greenwald, Bradley, & Hamm, 1993).

Consistent patterns of physiological responses have been documented. In fact, specific Event-Related Potentials (ERPs; e.g. Late Positive Potential [LPP], and Early Posterior Negativity [EPN]) have been consistently documented to occur in response to passive viewing of affective images. ERPs are measured brain activity that is the caused by specific sensory, cognitive, or motor event. We do not know what children's brain activity looks like when they are processing emotional images.

What is the significance of this project?

These affective picture systems have been used to document irregular emotional processing in adult clinical populations (e.g. Smith, Bradley, & Lang, 2005) and older children (e.g. Hajcak & Dennis, 2009). However, the lack of a developmentally appropriate picture system has deterred the same kind of research from being conducted with preschool populations. It is not currently known if preschool aged children demonstrate similar ERPs in response to these images.

This is particularly troubling, as the preschool years are a time crucial for the development of emotional competence. The lack of research on this area using ERP methodology prevents researchers from being able to explore the early development of emotion processing difficulties.

What are the goals of the project?

This project aims to assess preschoolers' neural reactivity during an affective image-viewing task. The research team has created a developmentally-appropriate emotional image set. We now aim to recruit 40 preschoolers to come to our lab and view and rate the images (for type and intensity of emotion conveyed). We will record their brain activity while they do so.

By documenting how a healthy, typically developing preschool sample process emotional images, we can begin to better understand the development of emotional competence. In the future, we can explore differences in clinical populations who struggle with emotions, which in turn may lead to earlier detection of impaired emotional processing.