Early Adverse Caregiving Experiences and Preschoolers' Current Attachment Affect Brain Responses during Facial Familiarity Processing: An ERP Study

Abstract

When being placed into more benign environments like foster care, children from adverse rearing backgrounds are capable of forming attachment relationships to new caregivers within the first year of placement, while certain problematic social behaviors appear to be more persistent. Assuming that early averse experiences shape neural circuits underlying social behavior, neurophysiological studies on individual differences in early social-information processing have great informative value. More precisely, ERP studies have repeatedly shown face processing to be sensitive to experience especially regarding the caregiving background. However, studies on effects of early adverse caregiving experiences are restricted to children with a history of institutionalization. Also, no study has investigated effects of attachment security as a marker of the quality of the caregiver-child relationship. Thus, the current study asks how adverse caregiving experiences and attachment security to (new) caregivers affect early- and mid-latency ERPs sensitive to facial familiarity processing. Therefore, pre-school aged foster children during their second year within the foster home were compared to an age matched control group. Attachment was assessed using the AQS and neurophysiological data was collected during a passive viewing task presenting (foster) mother and stranger faces. Foster children were comparable to the control group with regard to attachment security. On a neurophysiological level, however, the foster group showed dampened N170 amplitudes for both face types. In both foster and control children, dampened N170 amplitudes were also found for stranger as compared to (foster) mother faces, and, for insecurely attached children as compared to securely attached children. This neural pattern may be viewed as a result of poorer social interactions earlier in life. Still, there was no effect on P1 amplitudes. Indicating heightened attentional processing, Nc amplitude responses to stranger faces were found to be enhanced in foster as compared to control children. Also, insecurely attached children allocated more attentional resources for the neural processing of mother faces. The study further confirms that early brain development is highly sensitive to the quality of caregiving. The findings are also relevant from a developmental perspective as miswiring of neural circuits may possibly play a critical role in children's psycho-social adjustment.

Promoting mother‐infant relationships and underlying neural correlates: Results from a randomized controlled trial of a home‐visiting program for adolescent mothers in Brazil

“…This finding is consistent with previous reports of significant correlations between lower Nc amplitude to mother face stimuli and increased interaction-seeking behaviors with the mother in 6-month-old infants of adult mothers (Swingler et al, 2007) as well as lower Nc amplitudes to the mother's face in securely vs. insecurely attached preschoolers (Kungl et al, 2017).…”

“…The Nc to mother/stranger faces appears to be particularly sensitive to children's social behavior and relationships with their mothers. One study reported that, compared to securely‐attached preschoolers, insecurely‐attached preschoolers showed larger Nc amplitudes when viewing their mother's face, suggestive of greater attentional allocation to the mother in children with less stable maternal relationships (Kungl et al., 2017 ). Similarly, another study found that infants who showed more social engagement behaviors with the mother following a brief separation showed smaller Nc amplitudes to the mother's face than a stranger's face, interpreted as reflecting less attentional allocation to the mother in infants who held a stable representation of the mother as being someone to whom the infants could direct their social‐engagement behaviors while exploring their environment (Swingler et al., 2007 ).…”

Attachment, dependency, and attachment-related behaviors in foster children: A closer look at the nature of the foster child–caregiver relationship

“…On the other hand, referring to the concept of disinhibited social engagement toward strangers (see Zimmermann, 2015), increased looking at the stranger may be interpreted as heightened interest in the stranger’s behavior and as an attempt to engage with her. Notably, these explanations do not have to be mutually exclusive as both emphasize foster children’s attention to strangers, which, for example, has also found to be evident on a neurophysiological level (Kungl, Bovenschen, & Spangler, 2017). With regard to our findings on increased attachment behaviors, it may be possible that the stranger elicits both, wariness and sociability behaviors.…”

Early institutionalized care disrupts the development of emotion processing in prosody

“…For example, previously institutionalized infants and toddlers have attenuated ERP responses to familiar versus unfamiliar face stimuli in N170, negative component, and slow-wave ERPs (Parker, Nelson, & Bucharest Early Intervention Project Core Group, 2005). Similarly, researchers have found dampened N170 responses in young children who have insecure attachment styles following adverse care experiences (Kungl, Bovenschen, & Spangler, 2017). Research has also found differences in lexical and grammatical processing and spelling: previously institutionalized Russian adults showed differences relative to typically developing adults in ERPs roughly corresponding to P300 and N400, indicating IC effects on higher-order language processes (Kornilov et al, 2019).…”