Shyness in Early Infancy: Approach-Avoidance Conflicts in Temperament and Hypersensitivity to Eyes during Initial Gazes to Faces

‘Infant shyness’, in which infants react shyly to adult strangers, presents during the third quarter of the first year. Researchers claim that shy children over the age of three years are experiencing approach-avoidance conflicts. Counter-intuitively, shy children do not avoid the eyes when scanning faces; rather, they spend more time looking at the eye region than non-shy children do. It is currently unknown whether young infants show this conflicted shyness and its corresponding characteristic pattern of face scanning. Here, using infant behavioral questionnaires and an eye-tracking system, we found that highly shy infants had high scores for both approach and fear temperaments (i.e., approach-avoidance conflict) and that they showed longer dwell times in the eye regions than less shy infants during their initial fixations to facial stimuli. This initial hypersensitivity to the eyes was independent of whether the viewed faces were of their mothers or strangers. Moreover, highly shy infants preferred strangers with an averted gaze and face to strangers with a directed gaze and face. This initial scanning of the eye region and the overall preference for averted gaze faces were not explained solely by the infants’ age or temperament (i.e., approach or fear). We suggest that infant shyness involves a conflict in temperament between the desire to approach and the fear of strangers, and this conflict is the psychological mechanism underlying infants’ characteristic behavior in face scanning.

婴儿羞怯（Infant shyness）指婴儿对成年陌生人表现出羞怯反应，该行为于出生后第一年的第三季度出现。研究人员认为，三岁以上的羞怯儿童会面临趋近-回避冲突。与直觉相悖的是，羞怯儿童在扫描面部时并不会回避眼部区域，反而比非羞怯儿童花费更多时间注视眼部区域。目前尚不清楚低龄婴儿是否会出现这种冲突性羞怯，以及与之对应的面部扫描特征模式。本研究通过婴儿行为问卷与眼动追踪系统（eye-tracking system）开展实验，结果发现：高羞怯婴儿在趋近型与恐惧型气质维度上均获得高分（即存在趋近-回避冲突），且在初始注视面部刺激物时，其眼部区域的注视时长显著高于低羞怯婴儿。这种对眼部区域的初始高敏感性，与所观看面孔是母亲还是陌生人无关。此外，与直视面孔的陌生人相比，高羞怯婴儿更偏好视线偏离的陌生人。这种初始眼部区域扫描行为，以及对回避注视面孔的整体偏好，并不能仅通过婴儿的年龄或气质（即趋近型或恐惧型气质）来解释。我们提出，婴儿羞怯本质上是趋近陌生人的欲望与对陌生人的恐惧之间的气质冲突，而这种冲突正是婴儿面部扫描特征行为背后的心理机制。