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Towards a Social Neuroscience of Parent-Child Interaction: An Attachment Perspective

Sat, March 23, 8:00 to 9:30am, Baltimore Convention Center, Floor: Level 3, Room 322

Integrative Statement

In the preceding papers of this symposium, we have learned that child-caregiver relationship quality is associated with (i) children’s social threat bias during caregiver handholding, (ii) infants’ social learning in relation to parent-infant neural dynamics, and (iii) bio-behavioral synchrony during a parent-child cooperation task. These associations very nicely reflect the fundamental idea proposed by attachment theory that social emotional as well as cognitive processes in children are strongly influenced by the nature of social interactions with significant others experienced in early life (Bowlby, 1969).
This last symposium paper aims at drawing connections between the so far presented findings and putting them into a larger theoretical perspective. In so doing, it will refer to a newly emerging field of research concerned with parent-child interaction in particular, but also social interaction between two (or more) individuals over the entire life span more generally, namely the social neuroscience of human attachment (Vrtička & Vuilleumier, 2012; Vrtička, 2017). The main question of this new field of research is how memories of past social interactions translate into expectations about future social interactions, and how such mental representations of oneself, others, and the world – also called internal working models (IWMs; Bretherton, & Munholland, 1999) – can be traced on a neurobiological and -physiological level.
By describing a prototypical attachment response pattern, I will propose that human social interactions in general and attachment interactions in particular comprise four principal components (Figure 1). Two of these components deal with information in an emotional, fast, and sometimes even automatic bottom-up manner: a (social) threat/aversion and a (social) reward/approach component. Two other components are involved in meta-representing and/or modulating the emotional components in a cognitive, voluntary and top-down manner: a mental state representation and an emotion regulation component. I will then show how these components translate into a functional neuro-anatomical model of human social interaction and attachment, and how inter-individual differences in relationship quality – mainly assessed by means of attachment orientation – associate with altered functioning in these components across the life span.
Within this functional neuro-anatomical model of human social interaction and attachment, I will emphasize the importance of the reward/approach component, which is representing the innate response of social support seeking under threat. I will show that early interactions with unavailable caregivers thought to give rise to an avoidant attachment orientation were repeatedly found to alter the functioning of this reward/approach component, in the sense that social interactions are experienced as much less rewarding. I will present evidence linking such mechanism to altered reward system functioning on a neural level, possibly related to modification of oxytocin and opioid signaling. Furthermore, I will show how downregulation of the reward/approach component could be linked to upregulation of the threat/aversion component likely associated with impaired emotion regulation through modified glucocorticoid signaling.
I hope that such theoretical considerations bolstered by new experimental findings will eventually help inspiring the development of new prevention and intervention strategies for children and families at risk.

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