Characteristic of the study sample.

Paternal adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) have been recently linked to offspring’s brain development. Yet, none of the previous studies in humans have explored the association between paternal ACEs and a child’s attentional bias for facial expressions of emotion. Our study fills this gap. Data were collected from 239 fathers (mean age 32.15; SD 5.04) and their children at 8 months of age who were part of the FinnBrain Birth Cohort Study. Paternal ACEs were evaluated using the Trauma and Distress Scale (TADS) in five domains: emotional and physical neglect, emotional and physical abuse, and sexual abuse. In children, eye-tracking was used to study attentional engagement to emotional faces vs. non-faces and distractors, and to calculate face and fear bias indices. Hierarchical linear regression and the Mann-Whitney U test were used for analyses. A negative association between paternal sexual abuse and face bias was found in children (p = 0.043), when paternal postpartum anxiety and sex of the child were controlled, however the effect size was rather low. Additionally, daughters (n = 6) of sexually abused fathers expressed lower face bias (p = 0.02) and higher fear bias (p = 0.04) than daughters of sexually non-abused fathers. Our preliminary exploration suggests a potential intergenerational effect of paternal exposure to sexual abuse on the processing of facial expression among daughters at the age of 8 months, yet the results require further confirmatory analyses, especially in a larger study group of ACEs-exposed individuals.近年来，学界已证实父亲童年不良经历（Adverse Childhood Experiences, ACEs）与子代大脑发育存在关联。然而，既往针对人类群体的研究均未探讨父亲童年不良经历与儿童情绪面孔注意偏向之间的关联。本研究旨在填补这一研究空白。本研究的数据来自芬兰脑出生队列研究（FinnBrain Birth Cohort Study）中的239名父亲（平均年龄32.15岁，标准差SD=5.04）及其8月龄子女。研究采用创伤与痛苦量表（Trauma and Distress Scale, TADS）从5个维度评估父亲的童年不良经历：情感忽视、躯体忽视、情感虐待、躯体虐待与性虐待。针对儿童受试者，本研究采用眼动追踪技术考察其对情绪面孔、非面孔刺激及干扰物的注意投入情况，并计算面孔偏向指数与恐惧偏向指数。数据分析采用分层线性回归与曼-惠特尼U检验（Mann-Whitney U test）。在控制父亲产后焦虑水平与子代性别后，研究发现父亲童年性虐待经历与子女的面孔偏向指数呈负相关关系（p=0.043），但效应量较小。此外，与父亲未经历童年性虐待的女童相比，父亲童年曾遭受性虐待的女童（n=6）面孔偏向指数更低（p=0.02），恐惧偏向指数更高（p=0.04）。本研究的初步探索结果表明，父亲童年遭受性虐待可能存在代际效应，会影响8月龄女童的情绪面孔加工能力，但上述结论尚需进一步验证，尤其是在更大规模的童年不良经历暴露群体中开展重复研究。