Less Empathic and More Reactive: The Different Impact of Childhood Maltreatment on Facial Mimicry and Vagal Regulation

Abstract

Facial mimicry and vagal regulation represent two crucial physiological responses to others’ facial expressions of emotions. Facial mimicry, defined as the automatic, rapid and congruent electromyographic activation to others’ facial expressions, is implicated in empathy, emotional reciprocity and emotions recognition. Vagal regulation, quantified by the computation of Respiratory Sinus Arrhythmia (RSA), exemplifies the autonomic adaptation to contingent social cues. Although it has been demonstrated that childhood maltreatment induces alterations in the processing of the facial expression of emotions, both at an explicit and implicit level, the effects of maltreatment on children’s facial mimicry and vagal regulation in response to facial expressions of emotions remain unknown. The purpose of the present study was to fill this gap, involving 24 street-children (maltreated group) and 20 age-matched controls (control group). We recorded their spontaneous facial electromyographic activations of corrugator and zygomaticus muscles and RSA responses during the visualization of the facial expressions of anger, fear, joy and sadness. Results demonstrated a different impact of childhood maltreatment on facial mimicry and vagal regulation. Maltreated children did not show the typical positive-negative modulation of corrugator mimicry. Furthermore, when only negative facial expressions were considered, maltreated children demonstrated lower corrugator mimicry than controls. With respect to vagal regulation, whereas maltreated children manifested the expected and functional inverse correlation between RSA value at rest and RSA response to angry facial expressions, controls did not. These results describe an early and divergent functional adaptation to hostile environment of the two investigated physiological mechanisms. On the one side, maltreatment leads to the suppression of the spontaneous facial mimicry normally concurring to empathic understanding of others’ emotions. On the other side, maltreatment forces the precocious development of the functional synchronization between vagal regulation and threatening social cues facilitating the recruitment of fight-or-flight defensive behavioral strategies.

‘Something in the way you move’: Infants are sensitive to emotions conveyed in action kinematics

“…Further studies should explore whether dysfunctional family environments impact infants’ facial responses to others’ emotional action kinematics. Recently, it has been shown that childhood maltreatment affects facial responses to emotional facial expressions (Ardizzi et al, ).…”

Audience spontaneous entrainment during the collective enjoyment of live performances: physiological and behavioral measurements

“…Specifically, we studied the potential increment in cardiac synchrony among spectators of the same live performances and how this spontaneous physiological synchrony could be related to spectators individual rating of performance emotional intensity. Among the different levels at which synchrony can occur, cardiac synchrony is our primary candidate to be investigated, because autonomic responses are key substrates of emotional experience [30][31][32] . Moreover, spontanous autonomic reactions are extremely common in responses to art [33][34][35] .…”

Dispositional Empathy and Autonomic Reactivity During a Comfort Interaction

“…Zahn-Waxler et al, 1995) or a mixture of joyous/sad stimuli (e.g. Ardizzi et al, 2016). Although it is important to consider the nature of the emotion elicited in the current study, the emotional valence of the task stimuli has not been shown to influence the pattern of findings observed in previous studies.…”

“…The literature examining the relation between empathy and autonomic nervous system reactivity reveals a range of findings. The majority of these studies, however, found that increased empathy was associated with increased sympathetic or decreased parasympathetic activity in response to stressful or emotionally-provocative stimuli (Ardizzi et al, 2016;Balconi & Bortolotti, 2012;de Wied, et al, 2012;Geringer, 2015;Liew et al, 2011;Miller, et al, 2016;Oliveira-Silva & Gonclaves, 2011;Tracy & Giummarra, 2017;Truzzi et al, 2016;Wiesenfeld et al, 1984;Zahn-Waxler et al, 1995). The series of studies conducted by Stellar and colleagues (2015), in contrast, found that engagement in compassion was associated with decreased sympathetic response to stress.…”

“…The only study to use a standard mental stress stimuli found a positive association between empathy and autonomic response (Tracy & Giummarra, 2017), but the only study to use an auditory stimulus reported mixed findings (higher empathy was associated with increased SCR and respiration and decreased HR) (Vanderpool & Barratt, 1970). The only study to utilize photos of emotional expression found that higher empathy was associated with increased sympathetic response (Ardizzi et al, 2016).…”