Between faces: childhood adversity is associated with reduced threat-safety discrimination during facial expression processing in adolescence.

backgroundChildhood adversity has been associated with alterations in threat-related information processing, including heightened perceptual sensitivity and attention bias towards threatening facial expressions, as well as hostile attributions of neutral faces, although there is a large degree of variability and inconsistency in reported findings.

methodsHere, we aimed to implicitly measure neural facial expression processing in 120 adolescents between 12 and 16 years old with and without exposure to childhood adversity. Participants were excluded if they had any major medical or neurological disorder or intellectual disability, were pregnant, used psychotropic medication or reported acute suicidality or an ongoing abusive situation. We combined fast periodic visual stimulation with electroencephalography in two separate paradigms to assess the neural sensitivity and responsivity towards neutral and expressive, i.e. happy and angry, faces. Linear mixed effects models were used to assess the impact of childhood adversity on facial expression processing.

resultsSixty-six girls, 53 boys and one adolescent who identified as 'other', between 12 and 16 years old (M = 13.93), participated in the current study. Of those, 64 participants were exposed to childhood adversity. In contrast to our hypotheses, adolescents exposed to adversity show lower expression-discrimination responses for angry faces presented in between neutral faces and higher expression-discrimination responses for happy faces presented in between neutral faces than unexposed controls. Moreover, adolescents exposed to adversity, but not unexposed controls, showed lower neural responsivity to both angry and neutral faces that were simultaneously presented.

conclusionsWe therefore conclude that childhood adversity is associated with a hostile attribution of neutral faces, thereby reducing the dissimilarity between neutral and angry faces. This reduced threat-safety discrimination may increase risk for psychopathology in individuals exposed to childhood adversity.