engleski

Croatian validation of the City Infant Faces Database

Background: Parental ability to perceive and adequately respond to facial expressions of their infants is crucial for the infant survival. Although images of adult facial expressions have been well developed so far, images of infant facial expression have been available only recently. The City Infant Faces Database (CIFD ; Webb, Ayers, & Endress, 2017), a set of 154 images provided by the parents, was validated in the UK on student midwives and nurses. Aims and Objectives: The aim of this study was to validate the CIFD in a Croatian sample of students. Method: Three-hundred and fifty students from nursing studies and students from social sciences and humanities were presented with black-and- white images. The participants rated each image, as in the original study, in respect to valence of facial expression (negative/neutral/positive), intensity, clarity, and genuineness of expression (on a 5-point scale), internal emotion (negative/neutral/positive) and strength of internal emotion (on a 5-point scale). Results: The results showed high agreement with the initial set, although average agreement for positive images was somewhat lower than in the original validation study. A series of two-way ANOVA showed that there was a significant effect of image valence, showing that neutral images were rated with lower levels of intensity, clarity, and genuineness than the negative and positive images, while the highest strength of internal emotion was for positive images. There was no significant effect of infant gender nor the infant age on the intensity, clarity, genuineness, and strength of internal emotion. Interpretation/Discussion: Croatian sample, compared to the original study, on average rated images as being more intense, more clear, more genuine, and reported stronger internal emotion. Conclusions: The CIFD showed high cross-cultural consistency and is a promising tool for research. The database should be further validated in a sample of parents, with a focus on its prognostic validity.

infant, facial expression, validation, database

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