2 37 Neural and affective responses to prolonged eye contact with one’s own adolescent child and unfamiliar others Figure 2.2 Mean levels of self-reported feelings of connectedness, feelings about the targets and parents’ mood after the videos of all targets (i.e., own child, unfamiliar child, unfamiliar adult, self) in both gaze directions (i.e., direct and averted gaze). Parents reported enhanced feelings of connectedness (A), enhanced positive feelings towards another person (B), and a better mood (C) after prolonged direct gaze versus averted gaze. Parents felt more positive and connected after videos of their child versus others. Eye contact (Δdirect – averted gaze) induced greater effects on feelings of connectedness and feelings about others after videos of unfamiliar others compared to their own child. Error bars represent standard error of the mean. Significant p-values <.05 were indicated by *, p <.01 by **, and p <.001 by ***. Gaze responses To examine to what extent parents gazed towards the eye region of the targets during direct versus averted gaze videos and whether these responses are moderated by the identity of the targets, we performed a 2 × 4 generalized linear mixed regression analysis in participants of whom gaze data was successfully collected (48 out of 79 participants; 61% of the sample). We found a main effect of gaze direction, showing that parents overall gazed significantly more to the eye region of targets during direct versus averted gaze videos (B = 2.46, SE = 0.95, t(694) = 2.58, p = .010, d = 0.19) (Figure 2.3-A and 2.3-B). Furthermore, we found a main effect of target (χ2(3) = 36.71, p <.001). Post-hoc pairwise (Bonferroni corrected) comparisons indicated a higher percentage of dwell time within the eye region of the unfamiliar adult, irrespective of gaze direction, compared to their own child (p <.001, d = 0.61), an unfamiliar child (p <.001, d = 0.43), or themselves (p = .001, d = 0.38), see Figure 2.3-B. Parents did not significantly differ in the amount of gaze towards the eye region of their own child, an unfamiliar child, or to their own eye region (all p-values >.161). There was no significant interaction between gaze direction and target on the amount of gaze towards the eye region of targets (p = .346), showing that the difference in gaze towards the eye region between direct and averted gaze videos did not depend on the target in the video. Interestingly, parents’ percentage of dwell time with respect to the overall face area did not differ between the different targets (Figure 2.3-C), indicating that
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