An important feature of the development of emotion recognition in infants is the emergence of a robust attentional bias for fearful faces. There is some debate about when this enhanced sensitivity to fearful expressions develops. The current study explored whether 3-month-olds demonstrate differential behavioral and neural responding to happy and fearful faces. Three-month-old infants (n = 69) participated in a behavioral task that assessed whether they show a visual preference for fearful faces and an event-related potential (ERP) task that assessed their neural responses to fearful and happy faces. Infants showed a looking preference for fearful over happy faces. They also showed differential neural responding over occiptotemporal regions that have been implicated in face perception (i.e., N290, P400), but not over frontocentral regions that have been implicated in attentional processes (i.e., Nc). These findings suggest that 3-month-olds display an early perceptual sensitivity to fearful faces, which may presage the emergence of the attentional bias for fearful faces in older infants. Tracking the ontogeny of this phenomenon is necessary to understand its relationship with later developmental outcomes.

婴儿情绪识别发展的一个重要特征是对恐惧面孔的强烈注意偏见的出现。关于何时会增强对恐惧表情的敏感性，存在一些争论。目前的研究探讨了3个月大的婴儿是否表现出对快乐和恐惧面孔的不同行为和神经反应。三个月大的婴儿（ñ= 69）参加了一项行为任务，该任务评估了他们是否表现出对恐惧面孔的视觉偏爱，以及一项与事件相关的电位（ERP）任务，评估了他们对恐惧面孔和快乐面孔的神经反应。婴儿表现出对恐惧而不是开心的表情的偏爱。他们还显示了在涉及面部感知的枕颞区（即N290，P400）上的差异性神经反应，但没有在涉及注意力过程（即Nc）的额中部区域上显示出不同的神经反应。这些发现表明，3个月大的婴儿对恐惧的面孔表现出较早的感知敏感性，这可能预示了较大的婴儿对恐惧的面孔的注意偏见的出现。跟踪此现象的本体是了解其与以后的发育结果的关系所必需的。