30 Chapter 2 Measures and materials Eye contact task To characterize neural and affective responses to prolonged eye contact, we developed a new fMRI paradigm. During the task, parents were shown pre-recorded video stimuli of four targets, including their own child, an unfamiliar child, an unfamiliar adult, and themselves; all facing the camera. Each video contained a single target who looked straight into the camera (direct gaze) or averted their gaze to the left side of the camera (averted gaze), resulting in eight distinct videos: Gaze direction (2 levels: Direct versus averted gaze) × target (4 levels: Own child, unfamiliar child, unfamiliar adult, self). We measured parents’ eye movements during the task using an MRI compatible eye-tracking set-up. See Figure 2.1 for an overview of the task. While in the scanner, parents were instructed to make eye contact with the persons in the videos. Each trial started with a fixation cross (2-5 s), after which parents were presented with a video of one of the targets (i.e., own child, unfamiliar child, unfamiliar adult, self) in one of the gaze directions (i.e., direct gaze or averted gaze) for 16-38 s. The gender of the unfamiliar adult was matched to parents’ own gender and the gender of the unfamiliar child was matched to the parents’ child with whom they participated in the study. After watching videos including parents’ own child, an unfamiliar child, and an unfamiliar adult, parents were asked to answer three questions; (1) “How connected do you feel with this person at this moment?”, (2) “How do you feel about this person at this moment?”, and (3) “How do you feel at this moment?”. After the videos of the self, parents only reported on their mood (question 3). Parents could rate their affect on a Likert scale ranging from 1 (not at all/very negative) to 7 (very much/very positive) and they were instructed to answer and confirm the question within 8 s. The questions were self-paced and they could press any button to display a box around the middle option and then press the button corresponding to their right index (to go left) and right middle finger (to go right) to move the box to their preferred answer. They could confirm their answer by pressing the button corresponding to their left index finger. Prior to performing the task, outside the scanner, parents rated their mood, how they felt about the person, and how connected they felt with the person in the videos in response to static pictures of each target with a direct gaze. We included these baseline measures to ascertain whether increases in affect in response to prolonged direct gaze in the task could be attributed to making prolonged eye contact relative to baseline. For the preparation of the video fragments, we recorded videos of the parents and their adolescent children during the lab visit. The videos had to have a minimal duration of 45 s and were recorded in front of a white wall. Parents and adolescents were wearing a black t-shirt during the recordings to avoid distraction due to their clothing. We asked parents and adolescents to look in the camera with a friendly, but neutral, facial expression and to imagine
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