Effects of Adult Attachment and Emotional Distractors on Brain Mechanisms of Cognitive Control

Abstract

Using data from 34 participants who completed an emotion-word Stroop task during functional magnetic resonance imaging, we examined the effects of adult attachment on neural activity associated with top-down cognitive control in the presence of emotional distractors. Individuals with lower levels of secure-base-script knowledge—reflected in an adult’s inability to generate narratives in which attachment-related threats are recognized, competent help is provided, and the problem is resolved—demonstrated more activity in prefrontal cortical regions associated with emotion regulation (e.g., right orbitofrontal cortex) and with top-down cognitive control (left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, anterior cingulate cortex, and superior frontal gyrus). Less efficient performance and related increases in brain activity suggest that insecure attachment involves a vulnerability to distraction by attachment-relevant emotional information and that greater cognitive control is required to attend to task-relevant, nonemotional information. These results contribute to the understanding of mechanisms through which attachment-related experiences may influence developmental adaptation.

Keywords

attachment secure-base-script knowledge cognitive control emotion regulation Stroop fMRI

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Analysis Group, University of Oxford Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging of the Brain Centre. (2008). Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging of the Brain Software Library [Computer software]. Retrieved December 2, 2008, from http://www.fmrib.ox.ac.uk/fsl/fsl/downloading.html

Banich

M.T.

Mackiewicz

K.L.

Depue

B.E.

Whitmer

Miller

G.A.

Heller

(2009). Cognitive control mechanisms, emotion and memory: A neural perspective with implications for psychopathology. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, 33, 613–616.

Belsky

Spritz

Crnic

(1996). Infant attachment security and affective-cognitive information processing at age 3. Psychological Science, 7, 111–114.

Bowlby

(1979). The making and breaking of affectional bonds. London, England: Tavistock.

Bowlby

(1988). A secure base: Clinical applications of attachment theory. London, England: Routledge.

Buchheim

Erk

George

Kächele

Ruchsow

Spitzer

(2006). Measuring attachment representation in an fMRI environment: A pilot study. Psychopathology, 39, 144–152.

Cassidy

Kobak

(1988). Avoidance and its relation to other defensive processes. In Belsky

Nezorski

(Eds.), Clinical applications of attachment (pp. 300–323). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

Coan

J.A.

(2008). Toward a neuroscience of attachment. In Cassidy

Shaver

P.R.

(Eds.), Handbook of attachment: Theory, research, and clinical applications (2nd ed., pp. 241–268). New York, NY: Guilford Press.

Coan

J.A.

Schaefer

H.S.

Davidson

R.J.

(2006). Lending a hand: Social regulation of the neural response to threat. Psychological Science, 17, 1032–1039.

10.

Cohen

J.D.

Peristein

W.M.

Braver

T.S.

Nystrom

L.E.

Noll

D.C.

Jonides

Smith

E.E.

(1997). Temporal dynamics of brain activation during a working memory task. Nature, 386, 604–607.

11.

Compton

R.J.

Banich

M.T.

Mohanty

Milham

M.P.

Herrington

Miller

G.A.

(2003). Paying attention to emotion: An fMRI investigation of cognitive and emotional Stroop tasks. Cognitive, Affective, & Behavioral Neuroscience, 3, 81–96.

12.

Cox

(2006). Analysis of Functional Neuroimages [Computer software]. Retrieved from http://afni.nimh.nih.gov/afni/download/

13.

Depue

B.E.

Curran

Banich

M.T.

(2007). Prefrontal regions orchestrate suppression of emotional memories via a two-phase process. Science, 317, 215–219.

14.

D’Esposito

Detre

J.A.

Alsop

D.C.

Shin

R.K.

Atlas

Grossman

(1995). The neural basis of the central executive system of working memory. Nature, 378, 279–281.

15.

Dozier

Kobak

R.R.

(1992). Psychophysiology in attachment interviews: Converging evidence for deactivating strategies. Child Development, 63, 1473–1480.

16.

Edelstein

R.S.

Gillath

(2008). Avoiding interference: Adult attachment and emotional processing biases. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 34, 171–181.

17.

Elliott

Dolan

R.J.

Frith

C.D.

(2000). Dissociable functions in the medial and lateral orbitofrontal cortex: Evidence from human neuroimaging studies. Cerebral Cortex, 10, 308–317.

18.

Engels

A.S.

Heller

Mohanty

Herrington

J.D.

Banich

M.T.

Webb

A.G.

Miller

G.A.

(2007). Specificity of regional brain activity in anxiety types during emotion processing. Psychophysiology, 44, 352–363.

19.

Engels

A.S.

Heller

Spielberg

J.M.

Warren

S.L.

Sutton

B.P.

Banich

M.T.

Miller

G.A.

(2010). Co-occurring anxiety influences patterns of brain activity in depression. Cognitive, Affective, & Behavioral Neuroscience, 10, 141–156.

20.

Gillath

Bunge

Shaver

P.R.

Wendelken

Mikulincer

(2005). Attachment-style differences in the ability to suppress negative thoughts: Exploring the neural correlates. NeuroImage, 28, 835–847.

21.

Groh

A.S.

Roisman

G.I.

(2009). Adults’ autonomic and subjective responses to infant vocalizations: The role of secure base script knowledge. Developmental Psychology, 45, 889–893.

22.

Guttmann-Steinmetz

Crowell

J.A.

(2006). Attachment and externalizing disorders: A developmental psychopathology perspective. Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, 45, 440–451.

23.

Heller

Koven

N.S.

Miller

G.A.

(2003). Regional brain activity in anxiety and depression, cognition/emotion interaction, and emotion regulation. In Hugdahl

Davidson

R.J.

(Eds.), The asymmetrical brain (pp. 533–564). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

24.

Herrington

J.D.

Mohanty

Koven

N.S.

Fisher

J.E.

Stewart

J.L.

Banich

M.T.

(2005). Emotion-modulated performance and activity in left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. Emotion, 5, 200–207.

25.

Koven

Heller

Banich

M.T.

Miller

G.A.

(2003). Relationships of distinct affective dimensions to performance on an emotional Stroop task. Cognitive Therapy and Research, 27, 671–680.

26.

Main

Kaplan

Cassidy

(1985). Security in infancy, childhood, and adulthood: A move to the level of representation. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development, 50, 66–104.

27.

Miller

G.A.

Chapman

J.P.

(2001). Misunderstanding analysis of covariance. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 110, 40–48.

28.

Mohanty

Engels

A.S.

Herrington

J.D.

Heller

R.M.

Banich

M.T.

(2007). Differential engagement of anterior cingulate cortex subdivisions for cognitive and emotional function. Psychophysiology, 44, 343–351.

29.

Molina

Borkovec

T.D.

(1994). The Penn State Worry Questionnaire: Psychometric properties and associated characteristics. In Davey

G.C.L.

Tallis

(Eds.), Worrying: Perspectives on theory, assessment and treatment (pp. 265–283). Chichester, England: Wiley.

30.

Nielson

K.A.

Langenecker

S.A.

Garavan

(2002). Differences in the functional neuroanatomy of inhibitory control across the adult life span. Psychology and Aging, 17, 56–71.

31.

Nitschke

J.B.

Heller

Imig

J.C.

McDonald

R.P.

Miller

G.A.

(2001). Distinguishing dimensions of anxiety and depression. Cognitive Therapy and Research, 25, 1–22.

32.

Ochsner

K.N.

Gross

J.J.

(2005). The cognitive control of emotion. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 9, 242–249.

33.

Öhman

Flykt

Esteves

(2001). Emotion drives attention: Detecting the snake in the grass. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 130, 466–478.

34.

Roisman

G.I.

(2007). The psychophysiology of adult attachment relationships: Autonomic reactivity in marital and premarital interactions. Developmental Psychology, 43, 39–53.

35.

Roisman

G.I.

Tsai

J.L.

Chiang

K.-H.S.

(2004). The emotional integration of childhood experience: Physiological, facial expressiveness, and self-reported emotional response during the Adult Attachment Interview. Developmental Psychology, 40, 776–789.

36.

Sroufe

L.A.

Egeland

Carlson

Collins

(2005). The development of the person: The Minnesota Study of Risk and Adaptation from birth to adulthood. New York, NY: Guilford Press.

37.

van Emmichoven

I.A.

van IJzendoorn

M.H.

De Ruiter

Brosschot

J.F.

(2003). Selective processing of threatening information: Effects of attachment representation and anxiety disorder on attention and memory. Development and Psychopathology, 15, 219–237.

38.

Waters

H.S.

Rodrigues-Doolabh

(2004). Manual for decoding secure base narratives. Unpublished manuscript, State University of New York at Stony Brook.

39.

Waters

H.S.

Waters

(2006). The attachment working models concept: Among other things, we build script-like representations of secure base experiences. Attachment & Human Development, 8, 185–197.

40.

Watson

Clark

L.A.

Weber

Assenheimer

J.S.

Strauss

M.E.

McCormick

R.A.

(1995). Testing a tripartite model: II. Exploring the symptom structure of anxiety and depression in student, adult, and patient samples. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 104, 15–25.

Supplementary Material

Please find the following supplemental material available below.

For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.

For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.

0.00 MB

0.08 MB