7
results do clearly identify adolescents as
highly vulnerable to SUDs.
Research evaluating the efficacy of
screening for SUDs in primary care settings, the need for “timely treatment,” as
well as screening for any substance use at
all in primary care among adolescents is
the next step, the authors suggest.
Volkow ND, Han B, Einstein EB, Compton WM.
Prevalence of substance use disorders by time
since first substance use among young people
in the U.S. JAMA Pediatr 2021; published online
March 29; doi:10.1001/jamapediatrics.2020.698.
E-mail: beth.han@nih.gov.
Spanking found to increase fear
response in children’s brains
By Alison Knopf
involved in processing emotional and personal salience through the perception and
regulation of internal bodily responses.
Corporal punishment is defined as the
use of physical force to cause a child to
experience pain or discomfort.
Existing research on harsh parenting
and child abuse shows that these children have heightened neural responses
to threatening or negative stimuli in the
amygdala and broader salience network.
The greater the severity of violence exposure, the greater the brain response to
threat cues. Therefore, the researchers in
this study hypothesized that spanking may
similarly contribute to heightened salience
network responses to threat.
Prior to this study, little was known
about the neural consequences of spanking.
Study details
Not surprisingly, spanking children
— done by 50% of parents in the United
States — elevates fearfulness in children.
Researchers writing in the March/April
issue of Child Development have now
found proof of the connection in the elevated neural response in these children’s
brains to any possible threat. The study
was funded by the National Institute of
Mental Health.
In the United States, about 50% of parents report spanking their children at least
once in the past year, and one-third in the
past week.
There is plenty of evidence linking corporal punishment to detrimental child
outcomes. The work of Gershoff and others have shown consistent associations
between spanking and internalizing and
externalizing problems, poor cognitive
development, and other maladaptive
outcomes.
This study showed that spanking may
change neural responses in a way which
resembles more severe forms of child maltreatment — abuse.
The study was based on measuring the
brain’s response to depictions of fearful
faces.
This study found that children who
were spanked had greater activation in
the medial and lateral prefrontal cortex,
including the dorsal anterior cingulate
cortex, dorsomedial PFC, bilateral frontal pole, and left middle frontal gyrus
in response to fearful relative to neutral
faces compared to children who were
not spanked. These areas of the brain are
For the study, 147 children (75 girls)
were selected who were part of an ongoing longitudinal study and participated in
a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) assessment. Families were
recruited to achieve equal representation
across income levels, and sampled families
were required to be proficient in English
and to understand the assessment procedures. Children were assessed at four
time points between the ages of 3 and 5
(T1: 36–40 months; T2: 45–49 months; T3:
54–58 months; T4: 63–67 months). This
report focuses on a fifth wave of data collection carried out on a subset of these
participants (n=227) when children were
10–12 years old.
Each child participated in three laboratory sessions, which included assessments
of corporal punishment and maltreatment.
A subgroup of the sample (n=183) also participated in a neuroimaging assessment.
Of these participants, 10 participants were
excluded from analyses due to poor fMRI
data quality (see fMRI DATA Acquisition
and Preprocessing) and 26 participants
experienced physical or sexual abuse
and were therefore excluded from analyses evaluating associations with spanking
(n=147).
All instances of child maltreatment
were reported to the proper authorities,
and facilitated clinical referrals were provided for families whose children exhibited clinically meaningful levels of psychopathology. All research procedures
were approved by the Institutional Review
Board of the University of Washington.
The emotional face task is a computerized task that participants complete while
lying in an MRI scanner looking at a computer screen where actors’ faces are displayed one at a time.
Implications
The findings showed that spanking was
associated with greater activation to fearful
versus neutral faces in multiple regions of
the brain, in particular the salience network. The results suggest that spanking
may influence children’s neural response
to emotional cues in a way that is qualitatively similar to more severe violence.
There was also an increase in activation
in the MFG, the part of the brain which
helps to regulate emotional responses.
Heightened responses to threats can
allow children to more readily identify and
mobilize defenses against such threats to
avoid harm — but these responses are
likely to be maladaptive in the long term,
the researchers write, because they “may
promote elevated emotional reactivity, difficulties with emotion regulation, hostile
attribution biases, and increased risk for
psychopathology.”
Surprisingly, spanking was not associated with heightened reactivity in the
amygdala or anterior insula, the researchers wrote. However, they noted that the
study included fearful, not angry, faces.
If the children had seen images of angry
faces, the amygdala reactivity might have
been greater.
“Although fearful face expressions indicate the presence of a potential threat in
the environment, as reflected in another
person’s fear or distress, the fearful expression itself is not threatening in the way
an angry expression is,” the researchers
concluded. “Alternatively, this finding
may suggest that differences in salience
network responses to threat cues following corporal punishment are more constrained than following more severe forms
of violence. These are important questions
to evaluate in future studies.”
Cuartas J, Weissman DG, Sheridan MA, et al. Corporal punishment and elevated neural response
to threat in children. Child Dev 2021; published
online April 9; doi: 10.1111/cdev.13565.
The Brown University Child and Adolescent Behavior Letter June 2021
With an online subscription,
you can read CABL on the web!
wileyonlinelibrary.com
Copyright of Brown University Child & Adolescent Behavior Letter is the property of John
Wiley & Sons, Inc. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to
a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may
print, download, or email articles for individual use.