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Play it again: neural responses to reunion with excluders predicted by attachment patterns
Author(s) -
White Lars O.,
Wu Jia,
Borelli Jessica L.,
Mayes Linda C.,
Crowley Michael J.
Publication year - 2013
Publication title -
developmental science
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.801
H-Index - 127
eISSN - 1467-7687
pISSN - 1363-755X
DOI - 10.1111/desc.12035
Subject(s) - psychology , expectancy theory , ostracism , developmental psychology , distress , neural correlates of consciousness , social psychology , cognition , clinical psychology , psychiatry
Reunion behavior following stressful separations from caregivers is often considered the single most sensitive clue to infant attachment patterns. Extending these ideas to middle childhood/early adolescence, we examined participants' neural responses to reunion with peers who had previously excluded them. We recorded event-related potentials among nineteen 11- to 15-year-old youth previously classified on attachment interviews (11 secure and 8 insecure-dismissing) while they played a virtual ball-toss game (Cyberball) with peers that involved fair play, exclusion and reunion phases. Compared to secure participants, dismissing participants displayed a greater increment in the N2 during reunion relative to fair play, a neural marker commonly linked to expectancy violation. These data suggest a greater tendency toward continued expectations of rejection among dismissing children, even after cessation of social exclusion. In turn, the link between self-reported ostracism distress and neural signs of negative expectancy at reunion was moderated by attachment, such that self-reports were discordant with the neural index of expectancy violation for dismissing, but not for secure children.