How do adolescents regulate distress according to attachment style? A combined eye-tracking and neurophysiological approach

Neural correlates of distress and comfort in individuals with avoidant, anxious and secure attachment style: an fMRI study

Despite a growing literature, experiments directly related to attachment are still needed. We explored brain processes involved in two aspects of attachment, distress and comfort. Seventy-eight healthy adult males with different attachment styles (secure, avoidant, and anxious) viewed distress, comfort, complicity-joy and neutral images (picture database BAPS-Adult) in an fMRI block design. ROIs from the modules described in the functional Neuro-Anatomical Model of Attachment (Long et al. 2020) were studied. Secure participants used more co- and self-regulation strategies and exhibited a higher activation of the reward network in distress and comfort viewing, than insecure participants. Avoidant participants showed the lower brain activations. Their approach and reward modules were the least activated in distress and comfort. Anxious participants presented both higher activations of the approach and aversion modules during complicity-joy. In addition, comfort and complicity-joy were processed differently according to attachment styles and should be differentiated among positive stimuli to disentangle attachment processes.

Adult Avoidant Attachment, Attention Bias, and Emotional Regulation Patterns: An Eye-Tracking Study

Proximity-seeking in distress situations is one of attachment theory's primary strategies; insecure individuals often also develop secondary strategies. The mechanisms implied in attachment deactivation constitute a key issue in the current debate related to their role in support-seeking. The main aim of this study is to investigate the attachment deactivation strategy and the processes of proximity/support-seeking under distress conditions by analyzing the attentional processes (i.e., an essential emotion-regulation strategy), using eye-tracking techniques. Seventy-two participants (45 female; Mage 23.9 ± 3.97) responded to the ECR-R questionnaire in order to identify their attachment style. They participated in an experimental situation in which they had to choose between pictures of care or pictures of food, following the presentation of threatening or neutral prime conditions (via the pictures' stimuli). Results showed that a care-consistency response pattern was the most frequent pattern of response, particularly under a threatening condition; on the contrary, only avoidant individuals showed a lower care-consistency response pattern by choosing food pictures. The overall findings demonstrate that avoidant individuals used the deactivation strategy to process comfort-related attachment pictures, suggesting that they considered these stimuli to be threatening. The implications for attachment theory and particularly for avoidant strategies are discussed.

Attachment-based parent–adolescent interaction linked to visual attention and autonomic arousal to distress and comfort stimuli

In infancy and in the early years of life, emotion regulation and attachment relationships with parents are tightly intertwined. However, whether this link persists into adolescence has not yet been established and requires exploration. This pilot study utilizes an experimental design to assess the patterns of parent–adolescent interactions that are hypothesised to be related to two specific aspects of adolescents’ emotion regulation, namely: visual attention and autonomic arousal to distress and comfort stimuli. Two innovative and ecologically valid methodologies were utilized to assess (a) patterns of attachment-based parent–adolescent interactions among 39 adolescent–parent dyads from the general population, using the Goal-corrected Partnership in Adolescence Coding System (Lyons-Ruth et al. Goal corrected partnership in adolescence coding system (GPACS), 2005) applied to a conflict discussion task; (b) the two aspects of adolescent emotion regulation were assessed with the Visual/Autonomic Regulation of Emotions Assessment (VAREA) (Vulliez-Coady et al. Visual/Autonomic Regulation of Emotions Assessment, VAREA) paradigm, an attachment-related, emotionally arousing experimental procedure, using a distress-then-comfort paradigm, in conjunction to an eye-tracker synchronized with a physiological device that measured gaze and skin conductance response, (SCR), or emotional reactivity. In line with research in infancy, as predicted, markers of secure parent–adolescent interaction were linked to higher amplitude of SCR for distress and comfort pictures, and with longer attention to comfort pictures. On the other hand, parental role-confusion was associated with less time spent on comfort pictures by the adolescent. Overall, this pilot study suggests that interventions supporting collaborative communication between adolescents and their parents, as well as working to reduce parental role-confusion, may improve adaptive adolescent emotion regulation as assessed via physiological measures.

The relationship between dispositional attention to feelings and visual attention to emotion

Attention to feelings is a core dimension of individual differences in the perception of one's emotions. It concerns the frequency with which own emotions are attended to. The aim of the present eye-tracking investigation was to examine the relationship of dispositional attention to feelings with early and late attentional processes in the visual perception of emotional information. Attentional orientation was assessed in a sample of healthy women (N = 91) using eye-tracking during a free viewing task in which images with positive, negative and neutral content were shown simultaneously. Pictures were taken from the Besançon Affective Picture Set. State and trait affect, depression, and intelligence of participants were controlled. In our sample, attention to feelings was not related to positive affect, negative affect, depression or intelligence. Attention to feelings was negatively correlated with entry times for all emotional picture types. Moreover, attention to feelings was positively correlated with dwell time on positive images and negatively correlated with dwell time on neutral images. Our data indicate that devoting habitually attention to one's feelings is linked to an enhanced initial orientation of attention towards emotional scenes, irrespective of affective valence. Dispositional attention to feelings might also be associated with an attentional preference for emotional over neutral visual stimuli. The present findings on general individual differences in attention to feelings could have important implications for future clinical research on attentional biases.

The influence of attachment styles on autonomic correlates of perspective-taking

This study examined the effects of attachment styles on physiological responses during a perspective-taking task. Sixty-eight participants were selected according to attachment styles. Physiological responses were assessed using skin conductance responses (SCRs) in the three attachment groups (secure, insecure-anxious and insecure-avoidant) during the presentation of attachment-based pictures (distress, comfort or neutral) in two different perspective-taking conditions: self perspective-taking (i.e. imagine how you would feel in the given situation) or other perspective-taking (i.e. imagine how that person could feel in this situation). In the self perspective-taking condition, insecure-anxious individuals displayed higher SCRs than secure individuals for distress pictures. In the other perspective-taking condition, insecure-anxious individuals showed higher SCRs than secure individuals for comfort pictures. The results also showed a strong negative association between self-reported perspective-taking tendencies and SCRs in secure individuals. The findings suggest that perspective-taking plays an important role in the modulation of physiological responses in reaction to attachment-related pictures, which varies according to attachment styles.