title: Play it again: neural responses to reunion with excluders predicted by attachment patterns.
abstract: 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.
authors.affiliation: Yale University Child Study Center, USA; Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics, University of Leipzig, Leipzig, Germany.
authors.forename: Lars O
authors.initials: LO
authors.lastname: White
authors.forename: Jia
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Wu
authors.forename: Jessica L
authors.initials: JL
authors.lastname: Borelli
authors.forename: Linda C
authors.initials: LC
authors.lastname: Mayes
authors.forename: Michael J
authors.initials: MJ
authors.lastname: Crowley
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D059031:Anticipation, Psychological / Q000502:physiology*; D001921:Brain / Q000502:physiology; D017028:Caregivers; D005071:Evoked Potentials / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007398:Interpersonal Relations; D008297:Male; D009769:Object Attachment; D010379:Peer Group; D012929:Psychological Distance; D012059:Rejection, Psychology; D012938:Social Perception; D013315:Stress, Psychological / Q000523:psychology*; D018910:Video Games / Q000523:psychology