2-189 - Internal Working Models in the Making? Attachment and Social Information Processing During Early Development

Session Type: Paper Symposium

Integrative Statement

Attachment theories argue that variations in attachment quality affect attention, physiology, and behavior in response to social information, such as displays of emotion. Surprisingly little research, however, has examined associations between attachment and social information processing in infancy and early childhood, during which the attachment system undergoes extensive development. The four studies reported in this symposium used developmental cognitive neuroscience methods (EEG and eye-tracking) to determine whether attachment is associated with processing of social and emotional stimuli in early childhood, and whether such variations predict later socioemotional development. The first study measured neural approach-avoidance responses with EEG (i.e., frontal EEG asymmetry) to animations depicting responsive and unresponsive caregiving in 10-month-olds. The results suggest that temperament and attachment security interact in shaping infants’ emotional-motivational responses to third-party social interactions. The second study measured event-related brain potentials (ERPs) and attentional responses to facial emotions displayed by the mother in 7-month-old infants and observed reduced neural differentiation of and attention to the mother’s face in infants later classified as insecurely attached. Attachment insecurity was similarly associated with reduced attention to emotional faces at 10 and 18 months of age in the third study, which also found that attachment security mediated the association between maternal postpartum depressive symptoms and infants’ attention to negative emotional faces. Finally, the fourth study showed that attachment disorganization in 6-year-old children is broadly associated with attention to and identification of facial emotions, and tested whether such core socioemotional abilities mediate the association between attachment disorganization and externalizing behavior problems.

Sub Unit

• Parenting & Parent-Child Relationships

Chair

• Mikko J. Peltola, Tampere University

Individual Presentations

• Does Infants’ Attachment Relationship Bias Their Neural Processing of Animated Parent-Child Interactions? - Presenting Author: Szilvia Biro, Leiden University; Non-Presenting Author: Renske Huffmeijer, Leiden University; Non-Presenting Author: Mikko J. Peltola, Tampere University; Non-Presenting Author: Lenneke Alink, Leiden University; Non-Presenting Author: Marian J Bakermans-Kranenburg, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam; Non-Presenting Author: Marinus H van IJzendoorn, Erasmus University Rotterdam

• Attachment Security and Infants’ Neural and Attentional Processing of Maternal Emotion Signals - Presenting Author: Mikko J. Peltola, Tampere University; Non-Presenting Author: Szilvia Biro, Leiden University; Non-Presenting Author: Renske Huffmeijer, Leiden University; Non-Presenting Author: Lenneke Alink, Leiden University; Non-Presenting Author: Marian J Bakermans-Kranenburg, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam; Non-Presenting Author: Marinus H van IJzendoorn, Erasmus University Rotterdam

• Attention to Negative Facial Expressions, Maternal Postpartum Depression, and Attachment Quality in Infancy - Presenting Author: Linda Forssman, Uppsala University; Non-Presenting Author: Mari Fransson, Uppsala University; Non-Presenting Author: Gustaf Gredebäck, Uppsala University; Non-Presenting Author: Marcus Lindskog, Uppsala University; Non-Presenting Author: Anne Tharner, Department of Clinical Child and family Studies, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam; Non-Presenting Author: Ben Kenward, Oxford Brookes University; Non-Presenting Author: Alkistis Skalkidou, 4Department of Women's and Children's Health, Uppsala University; Non-Presenting Author: Carin Marciszko, Uppsala University

• Disorganized Attachment, Socio-Emotional Competences, and Externalizing Problems in Early School-Age - Presenting Author: Tommie Forslund, Department of Psychology, Uppsala University; Non-Presenting Author: Mikko J. Peltola, Tampere University; Non-Presenting Author: Karin C. Brocki, Department of Psychology, Uppsala University