背景:照顾者的早期体验质量会影响个人调整,并可以调节成年人对显著社会刺激的反应,像婴儿的脸。然而,在人际接受-拒绝理论(IPARTheory)的框架下,迄今为止,尚无研究检验护理人员接受或拒绝的早期经历是否与婴儿面部电生理(EEG)反应的个体差异相关.
目的:本研究调查了非父母年轻成人在童年时期感知的护理质量与非父母对婴儿和成人面部的行为和脑电图反应之间的关系。
方法:N=60名非父母的年轻人(30名男性;30名女性)完成了一个情绪识别任务,在脑电图记录过程中显示出情绪和无情绪的婴儿和成人面孔。使用父母接受-拒绝量表的简短版本收集了过去与父母的护理经历的回忆。
结果:在行为层面,识别所有面孔的较慢反应时间(RTs)与年轻人感知到的母亲排斥反应水平较高有关;特别是,与女性相比,报告母亲排斥反应水平较高的男性在识别面部时显示出更长的RTs。在神经生理层面,随着感知到的父亲排斥水平的增加,婴儿面部的N170振幅增加。报告父系排斥反应程度较高的女性,与男性相比,响应情绪面孔,N170振幅增加较大,LPP振幅减少较大。
结论:虽然对母亲排斥的更高感知阻碍了成年人识别面孔的行为反应,那些在童年时期感到被自己的父亲拒绝的人对婴儿面部的N170振幅增强。这可能反映出对歧视资源的更大需求,在婴儿面部处理的早期阶段,在那些感觉到父亲排斥反应程度较高的成年人中。成年人的性别调节了行为和神经生理水平的关联。总的来说,我们的发现扩展了IPARTheory的假设,即在童年时期被忽视可能会引发成年人的感知变化,阻碍了不同层次的婴儿和成人面孔等社会线索的阐述。
BACKGROUND: The quality of early experiences with caregivers affects individual adjustment and can modulate adults\' responses to salient social stimuli, like infant faces. However, in the framework of Interpersonal Acceptance-Rejection Theory (IPARTheory), no research to date has examined whether early experiences of acceptance or rejection from caregivers are associated with individual differences in the electrophysiological (EEG) responses to infant faces.
OBJECTIVE: This study examined the associations between the perceived quality of care during childhood and the behavioral and EEG responses to infant and adult faces in non-parent young adults.
METHODS: N = 60 non-parent young adults (30 males; 30 females) completed an Emotion Recognition task displaying emotional and unemotional infant and adult faces during an EEG recording. Memories of past care experiences with mothers and fathers were collected using the short form version of the Parental Acceptance-Rejection scale.
RESULTS: At the behavioral level, slower Reaction Times (RTs) in recognizing all faces were related to higher levels of perceived maternal rejection in young adults; in particular, males who reported higher levels of maternal rejection displayed longer RTs in recognizing faces compared to females. At the neurophysiological level, as the level of perceived paternal rejection increased, the
N170 amplitude to infant faces increased. Females who reported higher levels of paternal rejection, compared to males, had a larger increase in the
N170 amplitude and a larger decrease in the LPP amplitude in response to emotional faces.
CONCLUSIONS: While a higher perception of maternal rejection hindered the behavioral responses of adults in recognizing faces, those who felt more rejected by their own father during childhood showed an enhanced
N170 amplitude to infant faces. This might reflect a greater need for discrimination resources, at a very early stage of infant face processing, in those adults who perceived higher levels of paternal rejection. Adults\' sex modulated the associations found at the behavioral and neurophysiological levels. Overall, our findings extended the IPARTheory postulates that being neglected during childhood might trigger perceptual changes in adults, hindering the elaboration of social cues like infant and adult faces at different levels.