Behavioral assessment of infants

Jealousy results from the fear of loss of an important relationship partner or his/her
exclusive attention (Neu, 1980; Tov-Ruach, 1980). Infants are dependant on their
caregivers for basic needs and emotional support. Therefore, if an infant perceives that a
rival threatens the parent-child dyad relationship, it is possible that the infant will respond
in a jealous manner just as adults do when their important relationships are threatened .
Although infants have limited emotional understanding, Palmer and Palmer (2002)
suggest that jealousy evolved out of other resource-protecting drives. Because parental
care is a valuable resource, supporting survival, infants may have at least precursory
jealousy capabilities. Research on infant jealousy is minimal however, Hart and
Carrington (2002) characterized approach responses to the loss of maternal attention to a
life-like doll as jealousy. The purpose ofthe current repeated-measures research design is
to provide a conceptual replication of previous infant jealousy research. Whether infant jealousy responses are moderated by individuals approach or withdrawal tendencies, is
still to be determined and is another focus of the current research. Temperamental
characteristics may influence emotional responses and asymmetrical frontal brain activity
is associated with individual differences in emotional responding (see Coan & Allen,
2004 for a review). Therefore baseline electroencephalography (EEG) is collected in the
current research followed by subjecting 15 infants (mean age = 12.87 months) to two
maternal ignoring conditions, one involving the mother attending to a social object (lifelike
doll) and a control condition in which the mother attends to a non-social object
(book). Results show that infants respond differentially to the two conditions with
increased approach behaviors, arousal, and negative affect in the doll condition. The
infants' responses in the social-object condition are identified as jealousy, suggesting that
infants are capable of at least some complex emotional experiences.
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Jealousy is a response to a situation in which a person feels a combination of different emotions, such as love, anger, sadness and fear when an affectionate interaction is happening between a loved one and someone else. This paper discusses the definition and onset of infant jealousy, the physiological basis of jealousy, whether maternal factors play a role, as well as studies on jealousy and EEG patterns. It has been argued that infants, as young as six-months-old display jealous-like behaviors. During jealousy evocation conditions, infants demonstrate negative emotions such as protesting or crying, diminished distancing, and heightened gaze toward their mother during maternal inattention. Approach/withdrawal behaviors and electroencephalography (EEG) activation were studied in the context of an infant jealousy paradigm. In this investigation, 45 mother-infants dyads were exposed to a social versus non-social condition during maternal inattention. During the social condition, infants demonstrated increased approach-style gaze and reach and negative affect. EEG was collected during all conditions on a subsample of 15 infants and in agreement with adult jealousy literature (Harmon-Jones, Peterson, & Harris, 2009), infants displayed left midfrontal EEG asymmetry, and displayed more approach motivations during the social doll condition indicative of jealousy approach motivations.