Mothers’ Neural and Behavioral Responses to Their Infants’ Distress Cues: The Role of Secure Base Script Knowledge

Psychological Science · 2018 · Volume 29 · Issue 2

Abstract

This research examined mothers’ secure base script knowledge—reflected in the ability to generate narratives in which attachment-relevant problems are recognized, competent help is offered, and problems are resolved—and its significance for early-stage processing of infants’ distress cues, using event-related potentials in an emotion oddball task. Mothers with lower secure base script knowledge exhibited (a) a heightened P3b response—reflective of greater allocation of cognitive resources—to their infants’ distressed (but not happy) target facial expressions; (b) a larger P3b response to their infants’ distressed (compared with happy) target facial expressions, which is indicative of allocating disproportional attentional resources to processing their infants’ distress; and (c) poorer accuracy in identifying their infants’ distressed target facial expressions. Findings suggest that mothers’ attachment-relevant biases in processing their infants’ emotion cues are especially tied to infant distress and shed light on underlying mechanisms linking mothers’ attachment representations with sensitive responding to infant distress.

Keywords

adult attachment, infant distress, event-related potentials, information processing, attachment script assessment

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