Adult Attachment and Motivated Attention to Social Images: Attachment-Based Differences in Event-Related Brain Potentials to Emotional Images

Temporal characteristics of emotional conflict processing: the modulation role of attachment styles

Theoretical account of attachment proposed that individual differences in adult attachment styles play a key role in adjusting balance between affective evaluation and cognitive control. Yet, little is known about the temporal characteristics of emotional conflict processing modulated by attachment styles. Accordingly, the present study used event-related potentials (ERP) and multivariate pattern analysis (MVPA) combined with an emotional face-word Stroop task to investigate the temporal dynamics of attachment-related cognitive-affective patterns in emotional conflict processing. The ERP results demonstrated multiple-process of emotional conflict modulated by attachment styles. In early sensory processing, positive faces captured avoidant attachment individuals' attention as reflected in greater P1, while the same situation led to greater N170 in secure and anxious individuals. Crucially, impairment in conflict-monitoring function was found in anxious individuals as reflected by the absence of interference effect on N450, leading to impaired ability of inhibitory control as indicated by decreased slow potential. In contrast, avoidant individuals showed greater slow potential for inhibiting emotional interference. Furthermore, MVPA revealed that the corresponding time window for conflict monitoring was found for emotional distractors decoding rather than congruency decoding in the anxious attachment group. Convergent results from ERPs and MVPA indicated that the deficits in emotional conflict monitoring and resolution among anxious individuals might be due to the excessive approach to emotional distractors, as they habitually use emotional evaluation rather than cognitive control. In summary, the present study provides electrophysiological evidence that attachment styles modulated emotional conflict processing, which highlights the contribution of attachment to social information processing.

Attachment style and attention bias to emotional information: The moderating effect of stress, stimulus characteristics, and attention stage

OBJECTIVE

We examined whether insecurely attached individuals exhibit an attention bias to emotional information, and further tested the potential moderating role of stress, information valence, information attachment relevance, and attention stage.

BACKGROUND

Attachment style can predict people's attention to emotional information. However, the empirical findings are inconsistent, making it difficult to determine the associations between attachment style and attention bias to emotional information.

METHOD

We included 68 studies (N = 5417) across 46 published and unpublished articles (the initial pool was 627 articles) in the meta-analysis.

RESULTS

People high on attachment avoidance exhibited decreased attention toward emotional stimuli (d = -0.129, p = 0.020), which was not affected by stress, information valence, information attachment relevance, or attention stage. Conversely, people high on attachment anxiety exhibited increased attention toward emotional stimuli, especially under stress, if the information was attachment-related, and during late-stage attentional processing. They exhibited an early bias away from and a late bias toward emotional information, which was intensified under stress.

CONCLUSION

Our findings support the proposition that people high on attachment avoidance use deactivating strategies in attentional processing; whereas people high on attachment anxiety use hyperactivating strategies, especially when resources are limited (under stress). When resources are available, and it is relatively early in the process, people high on attachment anxiety respond similarly to those high on attachment avoidance.

Attachment style, emotional feedback, and neural processing: investigating the influence of attachment on the P200 and P400 components of event-related potentials

Understanding the interplay between attachment style, emotional processing, and neural responses is crucial for comprehending the diverse ways individuals function socially and emotionally. While previous research has contributed to our knowledge of how attachment style influences emotional processing, there is still a gap in the literature when it comes to investigating emotional feedback using event-related potentials (ERPs) within a cognitive framework. This study aims to address this gap by examining the effects of attachment style and feedback valence on ERP components, specifically focusing on the P200 and P400. The findings reveal significant effects of attachment style and feedback valence on both components. In insecure attachment styles, noticeable shifts in relative energy are observed during the transition from negative to positive feedback for both the P200 and P400. Conversely, individuals with secure attachment styles exhibit minimal to moderate variations in relative energy, consistently maintaining a lower P200 energy level. Additionally, both secure and insecure individuals demonstrate heightened intensity in the P400 component in response to positive feedback. These findings underscore the influential role of attachment style in shaping emotional reactivity and regulation, emphasizing the significance of attachment theory in understanding individual differences in social and emotional functioning. This study provides novel insights into the neural mechanisms underlying the influence of attachment style on emotional processing within the context of cognitive task performance. Future research should consider diverse participant samples, employ objective measures of attachment, and utilize longitudinal designs to further explore the neural processes associated with attachment.

ERP and attachment dimensions as predictors of seeking care or food comfort in stressful situations

In this study, we aimed to test the association of the Late Positive Potential (LPP) response and attachment dimensions in the choice of care/food pictures and its reaction time (RT) in threatening versus neutral conditions. Fifty-two participants (38 females, M_age 22.62) responded to the ECR questionnaire and were exposed to adequate visual stimuli, during EEG recording. Results showed that threatening stimuli increase the choice of care, decrease RT, and increase LPP magnitude in centro-parietal areas (Cpz, Pz, P3 and P4). Food choice was lower, with increased RT. Furthermore, larger LPP magnitude in centro-parietal cluster was associated with increased RT in the choice of care. Considering the dimensions of attachment, in threatening conditions, while anxiety was not associated with RT and care/food choice, avoidance was associated with an increase in care choice and RT. In conclusion, the specific association of increased RT in care choice with high LPP magnitude centro-parietal cluster may be explained in terms of a functional interference of these areas in the choice of care, but not of food. Further, we postulate that the increased RT of avoidant individuals may reflect a more articulated choice process.

Rethinking minority stress: A social safety perspective on the health effects of stigma in sexually-diverse and gender-diverse populations

For over two decades, the minority stress model has guided research on the health of sexually-diverse individuals (those who are not exclusively heterosexual) and gender-diverse individuals (those whose gender identity/expression differs from their birth-assigned sex/gender). According to this model, the cumulative stress caused by stigma and social marginalization fosters stress-related health problems. Yet studies linking minority stress to physical health outcomes have yielded mixed results, suggesting that something is missing from our understanding of stigma and health. Social safety may be the missing piece. Social safety refers to reliable social connection, inclusion, and protection, which are core human needs that are imperiled by stigma. The absence of social safety is just as health-consequential for stigmatized individuals as the presence of minority stress, because the chronic threat-vigilance fostered by insufficient safety has negative long-term effects on cognitive, emotional, and immunological functioning, even when exposure to minority stress is low. We argue that insufficient social safety is a primary cause of stigma-related health disparities and a key target for intervention.

Attachment Security Priming Delayed Negative Information-Related Attentional Disengagement Among Anxiously Attached Individuals: Evidence From Behavioral and Functional MRI Experiments

Although attachment security has been found to attenuate people’s experience of unpleasant information, how it modulates the attentional process toward such information remains unknown. The present study examined this issue by employing the dot-probe task in functional MRI. After completing the Experiences in Close Relationships-Revised questionnaire (ECR-R), 39 participants were asked to complete the dot-probe task in two conditions: the attachment security priming condition and neutral priming condition. The behavioral results revealed that individuals with high level of attachment anxiety exhibited larger attention disengagement from negative traits in the security priming condition than in the control condition. Correspondingly, the brain regions involved in attention regulation and shifting, such as the posterior cingulate and bilateral parietal area, were less activated among high anxiously attached individuals in the security priming condition. These results suggest a role of attachment security priming in regulating the emotional response in anxiously attached individuals during the attentional stage.

Individual differences in social attachment: A multi-disciplinary perspective

Social behavior varies across both individuals and species. Research to explain this variation falls under the purview of multiple disciplines, each with its own theoretical and empirical traditions. Integration of these disciplinary traditions is key to developing a holistic perspective. Here, we review research on the biology of social attachment, a phenomena in which individuals develop strong affective connections to one another. We provide a historical overview of research on social attachment from psychological, ethological and neurobiological perspectives. As a case study, we describe work on pair-bonding in prairie voles, a socially monogamous rodent. This specific topic takes advantage of many biological perspectives and techniques to explain social bonds. Lastly, we conclude with an overview of multi-dimensional conceptual frameworks that can be used to explain social phenomena, and we propose a new framework for research on individual variation in attachment behavior. These conceptual frameworks originate from philosophy, physics, ethology, cognitive science and neuroscience. The application and synthesis of such frameworks offers a rich opportunity to advance understanding of social behavior and its mechanisms.

I Need a Doctor, Call Me a Doctor: Attachment and the Evaluation of General Practitioners before and during the COVID-19 Pandemic

Attachment is a system of threat regulation, and insecure (anxious and avoidant) attachment orientations are important individual difference antecedents to the cognitive and affective attributions of trait inferences. However, little is known about how threat-related contexts, such as the current COVID-19 pandemic, influence attachment-related socio-cognitive schemas. Using an experimental research design across two independent samples of 330 (pre-onset of COVID-19) and 233 (post-onset of COVID-19) participants, we tested whether attachment orientations influenced general practitioner (GP) ratings and selection differently pre- and post-onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. We found that during the COVID-19 pandemic, when presented with only negative information signals, avoidant individuals attributed positive ratings to GPs, with differing ratings as the number of positive signals increased. Differences between pre- and post-onset of the COVID-19 pandemic were less pronounced with regards to positive signals. We discuss these results in line with signal detection theory (SDT) and provide practical implications in response to our findings.

Investigating the role of attachment orientation during emotional face recognition: An event-related potential study

We recorded event-related potentials (ERPs) while anxious and avoidant participants performed an emotional face recognition task featuring happy and angry faces. The avoidant attachment individuals were more accurate on angry trials, whereas anxious attachment individuals were more accurate on happy trials. FN400 amplitude was larger in the anxious attachment group than in the avoidant attachment group. Both groups produced larger N170 amplitudes in response to angry faces. However, happy faces evoked shorter N170 latencies in the anxious attachment group while angry faces evoked shorter N170 latencies in the avoidant group. Our results demonstrate that the processing of emotional stimuli differs between individuals with anxious and avoidant attachment styles. These differences start at early stages of stimulus processing and yield perceptual biases in the two attachment orientations. This appears to underlie differences in the later stage of recognition of emotional stimuli.

Attachment and autobiographical memory retrieval: Event-related potential evidence from strategic information processing

This article presents two studies using event-related potentials combined with an autobiographical memory (AM) retrieval task and a lexical judge task to explore differences in AM retrieval among differently attached individuals and to further explore whether the source of these differences is the schematic information processing mode or strategic information processing mode. The effectiveness of the information processing mode is also studied. The results revealed that differences in the AM extraction of different attachment styles were due to the strategic information processing mode, while no differences were found in the schematic information processing used by individuals with different attachment styles. Further, the strategic information processing used by the securely attached group was more flexible and efficient than that used by the insecurely attached group; moreover, the strategic information processing mode used by the avoidantly attached group was more stable and consistent than that used by the anxiously attached group.

Security priming improves attentional processing to infant emotions among insecurely attached women: The different roles of supraliminal and subliminal priming

In two ERP experiments, we examined the attention-related mechanism involved in perceiving infant emotions following exposure to security priming. Specifically, we examined how security priming affected securely and insecurely attached women. We found that both supraliminal and subliminal security priming resulted in increased attention allocation in anxiously and avoidantly attached women but had no effect on securely attached women. Moreover, we also found that supraliminal and subliminal security priming differed in their effectiveness in increasing attention allocation among anxiously and avoidantly attached women. Supraliminal security priming were more effective for anxiously attached women, whereas subliminal security priming were more effective for avoidantly attached women. The implications of these findings and directions for future research are discussed.

Adult Attachment Affects Neural Response to Preference-Inferring in Ambiguous Scenarios: Evidence From an fMRI Study

Humans are highly social animals, and the ability to cater to the preferences of other individuals is encouraged by society. Preference-inferring is an important aspect of the theory of mind (TOM). Many previous studies have shown that attachment style is closely related to TOM ability. However, little is known about the effects of adult attachment style on preferences inferring under different levels of certainty. Here, we investigated how adult attachment style affects neural activity underlying preferences inferred under different levels of certainty by using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). The fMRI results demonstrated that adult attachment influenced the activation of anterior insula (AI) and inferior parietal lobule (IPL) in response to ambiguous preference-inferring. More specifically, in the ambiguous preference condition, the avoidant attached groups exhibited a significantly enhanced activation than secure and anxious attached groups in left IPL; the anxious attached groups exhibited a significantly reduced activation secure attached group in left IPL. In addition, the anxious attached groups exhibited a significantly reduced activation than secure and avoidant attached groups in left AI. These results were also further confirmed by the subsequent PPI analysis. The results from current study suggest that, under ambiguous situations, the avoidant attached individuals show lower sensitivity to the preference of other individuals and need to invest more cognitive resources for preference-reasoning; while compared with avoidant attached group, the anxious attached individuals express high tolerance for uncertainty and a higher ToM proficiency. Results from the current study imply that differences in preference-inferring under ambiguous conditions associated with different levels of individual attachment may explain the differences in interpersonal interaction.

Do attachment patterns predict aggression in a context of social rejection? An executive functioning account

People tend to respond to rejection and attack with aggression. The present research examined the modulation role of attachment patterns on provoked aggression following punishment and proposed an executive functioning account of attachment patterns' modulating influence based on the General Aggression Model. Attachment style was measured using the Experiences in Close Relationships inventory. Experiments 1a and b and 2 adopted a social rejection task and assessed subsequent unprovoked and provoked aggression with different attachment patterns. Moreover, Experiment 1b and 2 used a Stroop task to examine whether differences in provoked aggression by attachment patterns are due to the amount of executive functioning following social rejection, or after unprovoked punishment, or even before social rejection. Anxiously attached participants displayed significant more provoked aggression than securely and avoidantly attached participants in provoked aggression following unprovoked punishment in Experiments 1 and 2. Meanwhile, subsequent Stroop tests indicated anxiously attached participants experienced more executive functioning depletion after social rejection and unprovoked aggression. The present findings support the General Aggression Model and suggest that provoked aggression is predicted by attachment patterns in the context of social rejection; different provoked aggression may depend on the degree of executive functioning that individuals preserved in aggressive situations. The current study contributes to our understanding of the importance of the role of attachment patterns in modulating aggressive behavior accompanying unfair social encounters.

Adult Attachment Styles Associated with Brain Activity in Response to Infant Faces in Nulliparous Women: An Event-Related Potentials Study

Adult attachment style is a key for understanding emotion regulation and feelings of security in human interactions as well as for the construction of the caregiving system. The caregiving system is a group of representations about affiliative behaviors, which is guided by the caregiver's sensitivity and empathy, and is mature in young adulthood. Appropriate perception and interpretation of infant emotions is a crucial component of the formation of a secure attachment relationship between infant and caregiver. As attachment styles influence the ways in which people perceive emotional information, we examined how different attachment styles associated with brain response to the perception of infant facial expressions in nulliparous females with secure, anxious, and avoidant attachment styles. The event-related potentials of 65 nulliparous females were assessed during a facial recognition task with joy, neutral, and crying infant faces. The results showed that anxiously attached females exhibited larger N170 amplitudes than those with avoidant attachment in response to all infant faces. Regarding the P300 component, securely attached females showed larger amplitudes to all infant faces in comparison with avoidantly attached females. Moreover, anxiously attached females exhibited greater amplitudes than avoidantly attached females to only crying infant faces. In conclusion, the current results provide evidence that attachment style differences are associated with brain responses to the perception of infant faces. Furthermore, these findings further separate the psychological mechanisms underlying the caregiving behavior of those with anxious and avoidant attachment from secure attachment.

The processing of body expressions during emotional scenes: the modulation role of attachment styles

There is broad evidence indicating that contextual information influence the processing of emotional stimuli. However, attachment theory suggests that attachment styles contribute to the ways in which people perceive emotional events. To shed light on whether the processing of body expressions during different emotional scenes is modulated by attachment styles, attachment-related electrophysiological differences were measured using event-related potentials. For avoidantly attached group, our results suggested that larger N170 amplitudes were educed by neutral bodies than angry bodies, which was found only in neutral scene. Moreover, significant differences were found in P300 amplitudes in response to angry bodies compared with neutral ones only during angry scene. However, securely and anxiously attached individuals were associated with larger P300 amplitudes in response to angry bodies versus neutral ones in both emotional scenes. The current study highlights the characteristics of cognitive processing of attachment styles on body expressions during different emotional scenes, with the variation of N170 and P300 amplitude in different emotional scenes as the best example.

Attachment Representations and Brain Asymmetry during the Processing of Autobiographical Emotional Memories in Late Adolescence

Frontal and parietal asymmetries have repeatedly been shown to be related to specific functional mechanisms involved in emotion regulation. From a developmental perspective, attachment representations based on experiences with the caregiver are theorized to serve regulatory functions and influence how individuals deal with emotionally challenging situations throughout the life span. This study aimed to investigate neural substrates of emotion regulation by assessing state- and trait dependent EEG asymmetries in secure, insecure-dismissing and insecure-preoccupied subjects. The sample consisted of 40 late adolescents. The Adult Attachment Interview was administered and they were asked to report upon personally highly salient emotional memories related to anger, happiness and sadness. EEG was recorded at rest and during the retrieval of each of these emotional memories, and frontal and parietal hemispheric asymmetry were analyzed. We found attachment representations to differentially affect both the frontal and parietal organization of hemispheric asymmetry at rest and (for parietal region only) during the retrieval of emotional memories. During rest, insecure-dismissing subjects showed an elevated right-frontal brain activity and a reduced right-parietal brain activity. We interpret this finding in light of a disposition to use withdrawal strategies and low trait arousal in insecure-dismissing subjects. Emotional memory retrieval did not affect frontal asymmetry. However, both insecure groups showed an increase in right-sided parietal activity indicating increased arousal during the emotional task as compared to the resting state suggesting that their emotion regulation capability was especially challenged by the retrieval of emotional memories while securely attached subjects maintained a state of moderate arousal. The specific neurophysiological pattern of insecure-dismissing subjects is discussed with regard to a vulnerability to affective disorders.

The Besançon Affective Picture Set-Adolescents (the BAPS-Ado): Development and validation

Emotional pictures are commonly used as visual stimuli in a number of research fields. Choosing relevant visual stimuli to induce emotion is fundamental in attachment and affective research. Attachment theory provides a theoretical basis for the understanding of emotional and relational problems, and is especially related to two specific emotions: distress and comfort. The lack of normalized visual stimuli soliciting these attachment-related emotions has led us to create and validate a new photographic database: the Besançon Affective Picture Set-Adolescents. This novel stimulus set is composed of 93 photographs, divided into four categories: distress, comfort, joy-complicity and neutral. A group of 140 adolescents rated the pictures with the Self-Assessment Manikin system, yielding three dimensions: valence, emotional arousal, and dominance. The pictures were also assessed, using a continuous scale, for different emotions (distress, hate, horror, comfort, complicity and joy). The ANOVAs for arousal and the Kruskal-Wallis tests for valence and dominance showed strong effects for category. However, for comfort and complicity, the dimensions of valence and dominance were not significantly different, while results for arousal showed no significant difference between complicity and distress. Our study provides a tool that allows researchers to select visual stimuli to investigate attachment-related emotion processing in adolescence.

Attachment classification, psychophysiology and frontal EEG asymmetry across the lifespan: a review

In recent years research on physiological response and frontal electroencephalographic (EEG) asymmetry in different patterns of infant and adult attachment has increased. We review research findings regarding associations between attachment classifications and frontal EEG asymmetry, the autonomic nervous system (ANS) and the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenocortical axis (HPA). Studies indicate that insecure attachment is related to a heightened adrenocortical activity, heart rate and skin conductance in response to stress, which is consistent with the hypothesis that attachment insecurity leads to impaired emotion regulation. Research on frontal EEG asymmetry also shows a clear difference in the emotional arousal between the attachment groups evidenced by specific frontal asymmetry changes. Furthermore, we discuss neurophysiological evidence of attachment organization and present up-to-date findings of EEG-research with adults. Based on the overall patterns of results presented in this article we identify some major areas of interest and directions for future research.

Attachment patterns trigger differential neural signature of emotional processing in adolescents

Background

Research suggests that individuals with different attachment patterns process social information differently, especially in terms of facial emotion recognition. However, few studies have explored social information processes in adolescents. This study examined the behavioral and ERP correlates of emotional processing in adolescents with different attachment orientations (insecure attachment group and secure attachment group; IAG and SAG, respectively). This study also explored the association of these correlates to individual neuropsychological profiles.

Methodology/Principal Findings

We used a modified version of the dual valence task (DVT), in which participants classify stimuli (faces and words) according to emotional valence (positive or negative). Results showed that the IAG performed significantly worse than SAG on tests of executive function (EF attention, processing speed, visuospatial abilities and cognitive flexibility). In the behavioral DVT, the IAG presented lower performance and accuracy. The IAG also exhibited slower RTs for stimuli with negative valence. Compared to the SAG, the IAG showed a negative bias for faces; a larger P1 and attenuated N170 component over the right hemisphere was observed. A negative bias was also observed in the IAG for word stimuli, which was demonstrated by comparing the N170 amplitude of the IAG with the valence of the SAG. Finally, the amplitude of the N170 elicited by the facial stimuli correlated with EF in both groups (and negative valence with EF in the IAG).

Conclusions/Significance

Our results suggest that individuals with different attachment patterns process key emotional information and corresponding EF differently. This is evidenced by an early modulation of ERP components’ amplitudes, which are correlated with behavioral and neuropsychological effects. In brief, attachments patterns appear to impact multiple domains, such as emotional processing and EFs.