The effect of still-face paradigm on infant behavior: a cross-cultural comparison between mothers and fathers.

Author(s):
Li, W. (0000-0001-6001-9182); Woudstra, M.J. (0000-0002-7591-7919); Branger, M.C.E. (0000-0001-9537-8169); Wang, L.; Alink, L.R.A. (0000-0003-3459-0785); Mesman, J. (0000-0001-7506-9094); Emmen, R.A.G. (0000-0002-9888-3037)
Published
2019
Publication type
Article / Letter to editor

Abstract

Most still‐face paradigm (SFP) studies have been done in Western families with infant–mother dyads. The present study investigated the SFP pattern in 123 Dutch and 63 Chinese 4‐month‐old infants with mothers and fathers. The classic SFP effect was found for positive affect and gaze in both countries. For negative affect, Chinese infants showed a different SFP pattern than Dutch infants. With fathers, in-fants displayed a less pronounced SFP pattern for positive affect and an increase from the still face to the reunion for negative affect. Only a minority of infants showed the ex-pected SFP pattern across episodes. Our findings support that infant emotion expression is influenced by parent gen-der and cultural context. An interesting avenue for further study is the exploration of the origins of within‐ and be-tween‐gender and culture differences in affective communi-cation between parents and infants.

Date issued
2019-10-07
Language
English
Is part of
Infancy (2019), Vol. 24, no. 6, p. 893-910
hdl
1887/83549
doi
10.1111/infa.12313