Infant shyness has been considered as a fear of strangers, however, the authors found that shy infants possess a conflicted temperament of both fear of and approach to strangers. This conflicted shyness presents behavioral markers of hypersensitivity to eyes and preference of averted-gaze faces to direct-gaze faces. These results contribute to understand underlying mechanisms of infants with developmental disorders, who sometime show a low-level shyness.
Researcher Information
The Exploratory Research for Advanced Technology (ERATO) “Okanoya Emotional Information Project”
Journal Information
Yoshi-Taka Matsuda, Kazuo Okanoya, Masako Myowa-Yamakoshi. "Shyness in early infancy: Approach-avoidance conflicts in temperament and hypersensitivity to eyes during initial gazes to faces." PLOS ONE, 2013
doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0065476
Contact
[About Research]
Yoshi-Taka Matsuda Ph.D.
Research Associate Professor, Center for Baby Science, Doshisha University
E-mail:
HP: http://akachan.doshisha.ac.jp/index.html
HP: http://www.jst.go.jp/erato/en/research_areas/ongoing/ojj_P.html
[About Program]
Tsuyoshi Nakamura
Department of Research Project
Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST)
E-mail: