Attachment security and cortical responses to fearful faces in infants

ABSTRACT

The present study measured event-related potentials (ERPs) to investigate whether cortical responses to facial expressions of fear are associated with the development of secure and insecure patterns of infant–mother attachment during the first year. Based on previous findings showing reduced attentional biases to fearful faces in infants with insecure and disorganized attachment, we hypothesized that insecure and disorganized attachment would be associated with reduced ERP differentiation of fearful from non-fearful faces. ERPs to facial expressions were measured at 7 months of age and attachment was assessed at 14 months of age with the Strange Situation Procedure (n = 61). Occipitotemporal face-sensitive ERP responses particularly in the time range of the N290 component were related to attachment security at 14 months. Only securely attached infants showed age-typical cortical discrimination of fearful from non-fearful faces at 7 months, whereas a similar pattern of ERP responses was not observed in infants with insecure and disorganized attachment. These results add to previous findings by suggesting that patterns of secure and insecure infant attachment are related to early-emerging differences in the perceptual processing of facial emotions, which could have implications for the development of social competence.

KEYWORDS:

• Attachment
• event-related potentials
• facial expressions
• infants

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Jukka Leppänen for his contribution to all aspects of this study. This work was supported by grants from the Kone Foundation and the Academy of Finland [Grant Numbers 275519 and 307657] to MJP, and the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (SPINOZA prize) to MHvIJ.

Disclosure Statement

The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

Notes

1. Given the marginal Emotion × Attachment interaction in the P400 amplitudes and the exploratory nature of the study, we were inclined to explore simple main effects within the attachment groups. In securely attached infants, a main effect of emotion was observed, F(1, 40) = 4.10, p = .05, $n_p^2=.09$, indicating a small effect of more positive P400 amplitudes to fearful (M = 18.88 μV, SE = 1.89) than to non-fearful faces (M = 16.00 μV, SE = 1.67) in securely attached infants (Figure 1). In insecurely attached infants, no significant main effect of Emotion was observed, F(1, 19) = .65, p = .43, $n_p^2=.03$ .

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Kone Foundation and the Academy of Finland: [Grant Numbers 275519 and 307657] and The Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (SPINOZA).