Deactivating attachment strategies associate with early processing of facial emotion and familiarity in middle childhood: an ERP study

Kungl M, Vrticka P, Heinisch C, Beckmann M, Fasching P, Ziegler C, Spangler G (2022)

Publication Type: Journal article

Publication year: 2022

Journal

Attachment and Human Development Routledge, Taylor & Francis

DOI: 10.1080/14616734.2022.2132050

Abstract

Neurophysiological evidence suggests associations between attachment and the neural processing of emotion expressions. This study asks whether this relationship is also evident in middle childhood, and how it is affected by facial familiarity. Attachment strategies (deactivation, hyperactivation) were assessed in 51 9- to 11-year olds using a story stem completion task. Event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded during children's passive viewing of mother and stranger emotional faces (angry/happy). At the stage of facial information encoding (N250), attachment deactivation was associated with a pattern pointing to increased vigilance towards angry faces. Further, the attention-driven LPP was increased to happy mother faces as highly salient stimuli overall, but not in children scoring high on deactivation. These children did not discriminate between mothers' facial emotions and showed a general attentional withdrawal from facial stimuli. While our results on attachment deactivation support a two-stage processing model, no effect of hyperactivation was found.

Authors with CRIS profile

Melanie Kungl Lehrstuhl für Entwicklungspsychologie und Pädagogische Psychologie Christine Heinisch Lehrstuhl für Entwicklungspsychologie und Pädagogische Psychologie Matthias Beckmann Lehrstuhl für Geburtshilfe und Frauenheilkunde Peter Fasching Professur für Translationale Frauenheilkunde und Geburtshilfe Clara Ziegler Lehrstuhl für Entwicklungspsychologie und Pädagogische Psychologie Gottfried Spangler Lehrstuhl für Entwicklungspsychologie und Pädagogische Psychologie

Involved external institutions

University of Essex GB United Kingdom (GB)

How to cite

APA:

Kungl, M., Vrticka, P., Heinisch, C., Beckmann, M., Fasching, P., Ziegler, C., & Spangler, G. (2022). Deactivating attachment strategies associate with early processing of facial emotion and familiarity in middle childhood: an ERP study. Attachment and Human Development. https://doi.org/10.1080/14616734.2022.2132050

MLA:

Kungl, Melanie, et al. "Deactivating attachment strategies associate with early processing of facial emotion and familiarity in middle childhood: an ERP study." Attachment and Human Development (2022).

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