Children’s mu suppression is sensitive to witnessing others’ social victimization

ABSTRACT

Empathy has been a key focus of social, developmental, and affective neuroscience for some time. However, research using neural measures to study empathy in response to social victimization is sparse, particularly for young children. In the present study, 58 children’s (White, non-Hispanic; five to nine years old) mu suppression was measured using electroencephalogram methods (EEG) as they viewed video scenarios depicting social injustices toward White and Black children. We found evidence of increased mu suppression in response to social victimization; however, contrary to well-documented findings of ingroup racial bias in empathic responses among adults, we found no evidence of racial bias in mu suppression in young children. Implications of these findings for neuroscience research on empathy and the development of ingroup bias are discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• Empathy
• mu suppression
• social victimization

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

¹ For more information, see http://cognionics.com/index.php/32-uncategorised/94-quick-20-dry-headset-2.

² All pre-processing and spectral decompositions were performed using MATLAB 2018b.

³ Emotional expressions using children’s facial data were collected and coded during the pre-victimization portion of the film (“pre”) and during the victimization portion as part of the larger design of this study. Children expressed significantly more facial sadness (pre M = .021, SD = .07, vic M = .131, SD = .23; t = 1.37, p < .05), anger (pre M = .046, SD = .17, vic M = .076, SD = .15 t = −1.97, p = .05), and concerned attention (pre M = .057, SD = .23, vic M = .132, SD = .24 t = −3.47, p < .05) during the victimization portions of the films compared to the pre segments.

⁴ Age and sex effects were analyzed by systematically combining mu suppression measures across orders, individual films, and race of victim and then running ANOVAs by child sex and age to compare mu suppression. Results showed that there were no consistent significant differences in mu suppression by age or sex.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the ISSR, Arizona State University [Seed Funding]; T. Denny Sanford School of Social and Family Dynamics, Arizona State University [Diversity Science Seed Funding].