Temperament and its Effects on Visual Attention to Emotional Faces

This study investigated the effects of temperament on visual attention to emotional faces. In order to examine this research question, a sample of 48 children ages 3- to 9-years-old viewed faces depicting angry, fearful, happy, or neutral emotions on an eye-tracking computer. This visual attention data was combined with a parent-reported measure of temperament in order to determine correlations between the two. Results showed no statistically significant correlations between temperament and looking behavior, despite these correlations being significant when the same tasks were administered to adults. Overall, these results suggest that the participants did not display temperament effects in visual attention of emotional faces, thus implying that this pattern may emerge beyond middle childhood