Kin rejection: social signals, neural response and perceived distress during social exclusion

Abstract

Across species, kin bond together to promote survival. We sought to understand the dyadic effect of exclusion by kin (as opposed to non-kin strangers) on brain activity of the mother and her child and their subjective distress. To this end, we probed mother-child relationships with a computerized ball-toss game Cyberball. When excluded by one another, rather than by a stranger, both mothers and children exhibited a significantly pronounced frontal P2. Moreover, upon kin-rejection versus stranger-rejection, both mothers and children showed incremented left frontal positive slow waves for rejection events. Children reported more distress upon exclusion than their own mothers. Similar to past work, relatively augmented negative frontal slow wave activity predicted greater self-reported ostracism distress. This effect, generalized to the P2, was limited to mother or child- rejection by kin, with comparable magnitude of effect across kin identity (mothers vs. children). For both mothers and children, the frontal P2 peak was significantly pronounced for kin-rejection versus stranger rejection. Taken together, our results document the rapid categorization of social signals as kin-relevant and the specificity of early and late neural markers for predicting felt ostracism.

Social exclusion modulates event-related frontal theta and tracks ostracism distress in children

“…It is therefore tempting to suggest that during this period, theta activity may tap into processes of expectancy violation, also associated with social exclusion (Somerville et al, 2006). By contrast, theta modulation at later processing stages is more closely linked to distress and anxiety, much like the frontal slow-wave activity that has been reported in several Cyberball studies (Crowley et al, 2010; Sreekrishnan et al, 2014; White et al, 2012). It is well established that increases in theta-band activity in humans are associated with experience of undesirable outcomes (Cohen et al, 2007), unpleasant experiences/events (Vecchiato et al, 2011), and/or negative affective states (Luu et al, 2000a).…”

“…Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and electroencephalogram (EEG) measures both show that various frontal responses are related to measures of distress, ostracism, mood, and attachment (Crowley et al, 2009; Crowley et al, 2010; Eisenberger et al, 2003; Masten et al, 2009; McPartland et al, 2011; Sreekrishnan et al, 2014; White et al, 2013; White et al, 2012). fMRI studies have identified a number of frontal regions engaged during social exclusion including the dorsal and ventral ACC, medial prefrontal cortex, ventro-lateral prefrontal cortex (Gunther-Moor et al, 2012), subgenual ACC (Masten et al, 2009; Masten et al, 2011), and right ventral prefrontal cortex (Eisenberger et al, 2003).…”

“…More recently, the effects of kin exclusion were examined in children and their mothers. Slow-wave ERP activity at frontal sites was correlated with ostracism distress when linked to rejection events during exclusion by kin, but not strangers (Sreekrishnan et al, 2014). …”

What they bring: baseline psychological distress differentially predicts neural response in social exclusion by children’s friends and strangers in best friend dyads

“…ERPs have been used to probe real-time temporal brain activity during social ostracism in Cyberball (Crowley et al , 2009a,b, 2010; White et al , 2012, 2013; Sreekrishnan et al , 2014; Themanson et al , 2015). Previous ERP studies with Cyberball focused on frontal slow wave responses to exclusion events, with greater negative left frontal/central slow waves tracking greater experienced ostracism distress (Crowley et al , 2009a,b, 2010; White et al , 2013; Sreekrishnan et al , 2014).…”

The Application of Electroencephalography to Investigate the Neural Bases of Parenting: A Review

“…Building on this work, one study reported that the level of dismissing attachment in an early adolescent sample was associated with the ERP response to social exclusion by unfamiliar peers (White et al, 2012). Further adaptation of this paradigm to examining the neural correlates of rejection by mother and child has recently been advanced (Sreekrishnan et al, 2014). A natural extension of this work would be to examine the attachment style of mothers and their children and how the quality of dyadic relationships influences the response both to infant cues and to similar social exclusion paradigms (e.g., Fraedrich, Lakatos, & Spangler, 2010).…”