2 47 Neural and affective responses to prolonged eye contact with one’s own adolescent child and unfamiliar others level of the brain, but gave additional insight into subjective feelings and actual eye gazing patterns. Although at the subjective level parents showed largest increases in positive affect in response to eye contact with unfamiliar others compared to their own child, we did not find reliable evidence of this pattern at the level of their gaze behavior or neural responses. We found robust evidence of parents’ brains differentiating between the sight of their own child versus unfamiliar others. These results provide new insights into the impact of the gaze direction, the identity of the gazer, and the duration of eye contact on the processing of prolonged eye contact in parents, both within and outside the parent-child context. We used it to examine neural and affective responses to eye contact with one’s own adolescent child, but it could be applied to many different contexts and research questions, such as the impact of eye contact with parents or peers during adolescence. This study paves the way for the development of interventions for those having difficulties connecting with others via eye contact (for example, individuals with autism or social anxiety) or in whom affiliative processes are disrupted.
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