How We Perceive the World Around Babies: Arousal Moderates Information-Processing of Infantile Cues

Parents have been shown to attend to and perceive features of the environment differently while in the presence of infants. What is the mechanism by which adults selectively process the information that is relevant to their caregiving goals? To address this question, we investigated how sympathetic arousal interacts with the content of visual infantile cues to shape attention to potential threats, as well as how those threats are perceived. Participants wore Galvanic Skin Response (GSR) sensors while they completed a computer-based task. This task involved detecting oncoming traffic in a virtual environment and making speed judgements of cars that had passed. Across trials, participants also observed and could interact with a virtual infant that could either crawl, walk, or was pre-locomotor. We observed that participants showed an increased arousal response while exposed to a crawling or walking infant, but not a pre-locomotor infant. The arousal response moderated faster reaction times and speed estimates towards oncoming traffic. Our findings suggest that adults are sensitive to infantile cues, and the resulting arousal promotes adaptive caregiving behaviors by influencing the perception of potentially threatening stimuli.