Adult Attachment Style: Biases in Threat-Related and Social Information Processing
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1
University of New England, Australia
An insecure anxious or avoidant adult attachment style may contribute to people perceiving their social environment as more threatening than if they had a secure attachment style. Attachment styles were assessed for 25 participants recruited from the Armidale area. Participants then undertook an emotional face-name Stroop task while electroencephalography (EEG) measured their brain activity. Positive and negative attachment-related images primed trials, and response to or distraction by faces during trials elicited social processing in conditions of high and low cognitive control. Participants with higher attachment avoidance responded faster to positively primed faces relative to words, while those with higher anxious attachment responded faster (though less accurately) to negatively primed trials generally. Source localisation of EEG data in these conditions indicated that avoidant attachment was related to increased activation of the parahippocampal gyrus during early (preconscious) processing, and anxious attachment with deactivation of the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex during later cognitive control. A social information processing bias is most evident for the avoidant attachment dimension. In contrast, a threat-related bias is apparent for the anxious attachment dimension.
Keywords:
EEG,
Adult Attachment Style,
social information processing,
eLORETA,
threat-related processing
Conference:
XII International Conference on Cognitive Neuroscience (ICON-XII), Brisbane, Queensland, Australia, 27 Jul - 31 Jul, 2014.
Presentation Type:
Poster
Topic:
Emotional and Social Processes
Citation:
Jamieson
G,
Stinson
R and
Evans
I
(2015). Adult Attachment Style: Biases in Threat-Related and Social Information Processing.
Conference Abstract:
XII International Conference on Cognitive Neuroscience (ICON-XII).
doi: 10.3389/conf.fnhum.2015.217.00284
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Received:
19 Feb 2015;
Published Online:
24 Apr 2015.
*
Correspondence:
Dr. Graham Jamieson, University of New England, Armidale, Australia, gjamieso@une.edu.au