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Link to original content: http://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31260488/
The modulation of facial mimicry by attachment tendencies and their underlying affiliation motives in 3-year-olds: An EMG study - PubMed Skip to main page content
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. 2019 Jul 1;14(7):e0218676.
doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0218676. eCollection 2019.

The modulation of facial mimicry by attachment tendencies and their underlying affiliation motives in 3-year-olds: An EMG study

Stefania V Vacaru  1 , Johanna E van Schaik  2 , Sabine Hunnius  1
Affiliations

The modulation of facial mimicry by attachment tendencies and their underlying affiliation motives in 3-year-olds: An EMG study

Stefania V Vacaru et al. PLoS One. .

Erratum in

Abstract

From early in life, facial mimicry represents an important example of implicit non-verbal communication. Facial mimicry is conceived of as the automatic tendency to mimic another person's facial expressions and is thought to serve as a social glue among interaction partners. Although in adults mimicry has been shown to be moderated by the social context and one's needs to affiliate with others, evidence from behavioural mimicry studies suggest that 3-year-olds do not yet show sensitivity to social dynamics. Here, we examined whether attachment tendencies, as a proxy for interindividual differences in affiliation motivation, modulates facial mimicry in 3-year-olds. Resistant and avoidant insecure attachment tendencies are characterized by high and low affiliation motivation, respectively, and these were hypothesized to lead to either enhancement or suppression of mimicry. Additionally, we hypothesized that these effects will be moderated by inhibitory control skills. Facial mimicry of happy and sad expressions was recorded with electromyography (EMG), attachment tendencies were assessed with a parent-report questionnaire and inhibitory control with the gift delay task. The final sample consisted of 42 children, with overall scores suggesting secure attachment. Our findings revealed that 3-year-olds mimicked happy and sad facial expressions. Moreover, resistant tendencies predicted enhanced sad but not happy facial mimicry, whereas avoidant tendencies were not significantly related to mimicry. These effects were not moderated by inhibitory control skills. In conclusion, these findings provide the first evidence for the modulation of mimicry by attachment tendencies and their underlying motivation for affiliation in young children, specifically for negatively-valenced emotional expressions.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Figures

Fig 1
Fig 1. Study design and EMG paradigm.
Study design illustrating the trials presentation during facial electromyographic (EMG) recordings over the zygomaticus major muscle (smiling) and the corrugator supercilii muscle (frowning). The example stimuli are not the original images used in the study, due to copyright license of the stimuli from the Radboud Faces Database. The avataars were created and used here for illustrative purposes only (https://getavataaars.com).
Fig 2
Fig 2. EMG time course activation plots.
Time course of standardized EMG activation of the corrugator supercilii (red) and zygomaticus major (blue) muscles, in response to happy (a) and sad (b) stimuli in bins of 100 ms from stimulus onset (0 ms) to stimulus offset (2000 ms). The green line represents the difference score between the two muscles for happy (a) and sad (b) stimuli in which each bin represents the mean (with the standard error) amplitude over 100 ms time.
Fig 3
Fig 3. EMG activation violin plots.
Violin plots illustrating the standardized EMG activation in the zygomaticus major and corrugator supercilii muscles, in response to happy and sad stimuli. The distribution of the data is represented by the violin shape, with larger width indicating higher value frequency. The mean of each muscle in each condition is represented by a plus sign, whereas the horizontal bars represent the minimum, the median and the maximum values. The whiskers represent the first and the fifth quantile.
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Publication types

Grants and funding

This research was supported by an Aspasia Prize of the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) awarded to SH. The funder had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.