Humans automatically judge a person's trustworthiness solely based on facial features and use these judgments to inform subsequent behavior. While recent studies demonstrate that already infants are sensitive to variance in facial trustworthiness, it remains unclear whether this variance also influences subsequent socio-cognitive processes. We investigated event-related brain responses (ERPs) to faces varying in trustworthiness in a gaze-cueing paradigm in 7-month-old infants. Our analysis focused on the ERP responses to cued or un-cued objects shown in isolation after the gaze-cue was presented. We observed an enhanced occipital positive slow wave (PSW) to un-cued compared to cued objects, suggesting a gaze-cueing effect irrespective of facial trustworthiness. Furthermore, objects in the un-cued condition elicited a larger fronto-central Nc when the gaze cue was provided by trustworthy compared to untrustworthy faces. This pattern suggests that while gaze cueing occurs irrespective of facial trustworthiness, allocation of attention, as indexed by modulation of the Nc amplitude, varies as a function of trustworthiness. Taken together, our results show that facial trustworthiness impacts object processing in the context of a gaze cueing paradigm, adding to the notion that it serves as an important social cue from early in ontogeny.

中文翻译：

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在7个月大婴儿的凝视提示任务中，面部可信赖度对物体加工产生影响的神经证据。

人类仅根据面部特征自动判断一个人的可信度，并使用这些判断来告知后续行为。尽管最近的研究表明，已经有婴儿对面部信任度的变化敏感，但尚不清楚这种变化是否还会影响随后的社会认知过程。我们调查了事件相关的大脑反应（ERP），以面对7个月大婴儿注视提示范例中不同的信任度。我们的分析集中在呈现凝视提示后，ERP对孤立显示的提示或未提示对象的响应。我们观察到与提示对象相比，枕形正向慢波（PSW）增强了，而与提示对象相比，暗示了凝视提示效果，而与面部可信度无关。此外，与不信任的面孔相比，当由不信任的面孔提供凝视提示时，处于非暗示状态的物体会引起较大的额中中心Nc。这种模式表明尽管凝视提示的发生与面部的可信赖度无关，但注意力的分配（由Nc振幅的调制指示）随可信赖度而变化。综上所述，我们的结果表明，在凝视提示范例的背景下，面部可信赖度会影响对象的处理，并增加了从面部发育早期起重要的社会提示的概念。