Debbané, Martin and Badoud, Deborah and Sander, David and Eliez, Stephan and Luyten, Patrick and Vrticka, Pascal (2017) Brain activity underlying negative self- and other-perception in adolescents: The role of attachment-derived self-representations. Cognitive, Affective and Behavioral Neuroscience, 17 (3). pp. 554-576. DOI https://doi.org/10.3758/s13415-017-0497-9
Debbané, Martin and Badoud, Deborah and Sander, David and Eliez, Stephan and Luyten, Patrick and Vrticka, Pascal (2017) Brain activity underlying negative self- and other-perception in adolescents: The role of attachment-derived self-representations. Cognitive, Affective and Behavioral Neuroscience, 17 (3). pp. 554-576. DOI https://doi.org/10.3758/s13415-017-0497-9
Debbané, Martin and Badoud, Deborah and Sander, David and Eliez, Stephan and Luyten, Patrick and Vrticka, Pascal (2017) Brain activity underlying negative self- and other-perception in adolescents: The role of attachment-derived self-representations. Cognitive, Affective and Behavioral Neuroscience, 17 (3). pp. 554-576. DOI https://doi.org/10.3758/s13415-017-0497-9
Abstract
One of teenagers' key developmental tasks is to engage in new and meaningful relationships with peers and adults outside the family context. Attachment-derived expectations about the self and others in terms of internal attachment working models have the potential to shape such social reorientation processes critically and thereby influence adolescents' social-emotional development and social integration. Because the neural underpinnings of this developmental task remain largely unknown, we sought to investigate them by functional magnetic resonance imaging. We asked n = 44 adolescents (ages 12.01-18.84 years) to evaluate positive and negative adjectives regarding either themselves or a close other during an adapted version of the well-established self-other trait-evaluation task. As measures of attachment, we obtained scores reflecting participants' positive versus negative attachment-derived self- and other-models by means of the Relationship Questionnaire. We controlled for possible confounding factors by also obtaining scores reflecting internalizing/externalizing problems, schizotypy, and borderline symptomatology. Our results revealed that participants with a more negative attachment-derived self-model showed increased brain activity during positive and negative adjective evaluation regarding the self, but decreased brain activity during negative adjective evaluation regarding a close other, in bilateral amygdala/parahippocampus, bilateral anterior temporal pole/anterior superior temporal gyrus, and left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. These findings suggest that a low positivity of the self-concept characteristic for the attachment anxiety dimension may influence neural information processing, but in opposite directions when it comes to self- versus (close) other-representations. We discuss our results in the framework of attachment theory and regarding their implications especially for adolescent social-emotional development and social integration.
Item Type: | Article |
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Uncontrolled Keywords: | Self-versus other-processing; Adolescence; Attachment theory; Negative self-model; fMRI |
Divisions: | Faculty of Science and Health Faculty of Science and Health > Psychology, Department of |
SWORD Depositor: | Unnamed user with email elements@essex.ac.uk |
Depositing User: | Unnamed user with email elements@essex.ac.uk |
Date Deposited: | 21 Sep 2020 13:39 |
Last Modified: | 30 Oct 2024 16:26 |
URI: | http://repository.essex.ac.uk/id/eprint/28735 |
Available files
Filename: Debbané2017_Article_BrainActivityUnderlyingNegativ.pdf
Licence: Creative Commons: Attribution 3.0