The Role of Attachment Anxiety in Maternal Attentional Processing of their Child's Face: An Eye-Tracking Study

Although mother's attention to offspring is deemed important to support their offspring's secure attachment development, little research tested this association. The current study aimed to test the hypothesis that how mothers orient their attention to their offspring is linked to differences in offspring's attachment style. Additionally, we tested whether this association depended on which emotions children express. 29 mothers participated with their offspring (48.3% girls; ages 9 to 15 years, M = 10.93, SD = 1.67). Across two experimental blocks, eye movements were recorded as mothers viewed photographs of offspring and unfamiliar children showing neutral (block 1) and facial expressions of fearful, happy and sad (block 2). Offspring's self-reported attachment anxiety was related to increased maintained attention of the mother on the offspring's neutral face, while more attachment security was related to reduced maintained attention. With regard to emotional faces, mothers of more anxiously attached children showed more maintained attention on all emotional expressions of their offspring, including sadness. Furthermore, we found a positive attentional bias of mothers with more securely attached children; increased attention on the offspring's happy face was found. No attentional processes were found for attachment avoidance. Different attachment-related parenting behaviors, leading to a specific attachment style of the offspring, could be explained by these attentional allocations.