Spanking may affect the brain development of a child
April 12, 2021
Science Daily/Harvard University
Spanking may affect a child's brain development in similar ways to more severe forms of violence, according to a new study led by Harvard researchers.
The research, published recently in the journal Child Development, builds on existing studies that show heightened activity in certain regions of the brains of children who experience abuse in response to threat cues.
The group found that children who had been spanked had a greater neural response in multiple regions of the prefrontal cortex (PFC), including in regions that are part of the salience network. These areas of the brain respond to cues in the environment that tend to be consequential, such as a threat, and may affect decision-making and processing of situations.
"We know that children whose families use corporal punishment are more likely to develop anxiety, depression, behavior problems, and other mental health problems, but many people don't think about spanking as a form of violence," said Katie A. McLaughlin, John L. Loeb Associate Professor of the Social Sciences, director of the Stress & Development Lab in the Department of Psychology, and the senior researcher on the study. "In this study, we wanted to examine whether there was an impact of spanking at a neurobiological level, in terms of how the brain is developing."
According to the study's authors, corporal punishment has been linked to the development of mental health issues, anxiety, depression, behavioral problems, and substance use disorders. And recent studies show that approximately half of parents in U.S. studies reported spanking their children in the past year and one-third in the past week. However, the relationship between spanking and brain activity has not previously been studied.
McLaughlin and her colleagues -- including Jorge Cuartas, first author of the study and a doctoral candidate in the Harvard Graduate School of Education, and David Weissman, a post-doctoral fellow in the Department of Psychology's Stress & Development Lab -- analyzed data from a large study of children between the ages of three and 11. They focused on 147 children around ages 10 and 11 who had been spanked, excluding children who had also experienced more severe forms of violence.
Each child lay in an MRI machine and watched a computer screen on which were displayed different images of actors making "fearful" and "neutral" faces. A scanner captured the child's brain activity in response to each kind of face, and those images were analyzed to determine whether the faces sparked different patterns of brain activity in children who were spanked compared to those who were not.
"On average, across the entire sample, fearful faces elicited greater activation than neutral faces in many regions throughout the brain... and children who were spanked demonstrated greater activation in multiple regions of PFC to fearful relative to neutral faces than children who were never spanked," researchers wrote.
By contrast, "(t)here were no regions of the brain where activation to fearful relative to neutral faces differed between children who were abused and children who were spanked."
The findings are in line with similar research conducted on children who had experienced severe violence, suggesting that "while we might not conceptualize corporal punishment to be a form of violence, in terms of how a child's brain responds, it's not all that different than abuse," said McLaughlin. "It's more a difference of degree than of type."
Researchers said the study is a first step towards further interdisciplinary analysis of spanking's potential effects on children's brain development and lived experiences.
"These findings aligned with the predictions from other perspectives on the potential consequences of corporal punishment," studied in fields such as developmental psychology and social work, said Cuartas. "By identifying certain neural pathways that explain the consequences of corporal punishment in the brain, we can further suggest that this kind of punishment might be detrimental to children and we have more avenues to explore it."
However, they noted that their findings are not applicable to the individual life of each child.
"It's important to consider that corporal punishment does not impact every child the same way, and children can be resilient if exposed to potential adversities," said Cuartas. "But the important message is that corporal punishment is a risk that can increase potential problems for children's development, and following a precautionary principle, parents and policymakers should work toward trying to reduce its prevalence."
Ultimately, added McLaughlin, "we're hopeful that this finding may encourage families not to use this strategy, and that it may open people's eyes to the potential negative consequences of corporal punishment in ways they haven't thought of before."
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/04/210412161850.htm
Positive aspects of masculinity helps improve boys' attitudes toward relationship violence
Study evaluates a pilot violence prevention program for middle school boys
May 22, 2019
Science Daily/Rutgers University
A program aimed at reducing violence against women and girls by focusing on positive expressions of masculinity changed the attitudes of middle school boys who may have been prone to harassment and dating violence as they got older, according to a Rutgers University-New Brunswick and University of New Hampshire led study that was done in partnership with prevention practitioners in New England.
The findings, published in Children and Youth Services Review, suggest the pilot program, "Reducing Sexism and Violence Program -- Middle School Program (RSVP-MSP)," improved attitudes related to the use of coercion and violence in relationships. It also found that the program, geared towards middle school boys, changed beliefs that violence, including harassment and sexual and dating violence was acceptable.
"Most research on sexual and dating violence has focused on high school and college students -- but research shows these forms of violence are also prevalent among middle school students," said Victoria Banyard, lead author and professor at Rutgers University-New Brunswick's School of Social Work.
Despite nationwide concerns about the rate of violence among middle school youth, there have been few rigorously evaluated sexual and dating violence prevention initiatives for boys in this age range, particularly initiatives that emphasize the promotion of healthy masculinity, Banyard said.
The program, developed by the nonprofit Maine Boys to Men, taught 292 sixth through eighth-grade boys across four schools in weekly classroom-based workshops over four months. Banyard suggested that future research combine classroom workshops on masculinity with broader school-level violence prevention strategies.
It includes four, one-hour sessions that explore the normalization, pervasiveness, and harmful nature of gender role assumptions. The boys involved in the program learn about empathy, healthy relationships, gender-based violence and receive bystander intervention training through physical activity, peer-to-peer dialogue, storytelling, role play, multimedia and group discussions.
"By focusing on positive expressions of masculinity, such as the ability to be respectful in relationships, this program helps boys find positive ways to prevent violence and to cope with violence to which they may already have been exposed," Banyard said.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/05/190522141820.htm
Children who experience violence early in life develop faster
A study examines the effects of early life adversity on pubertal development and epigenetic age
November 1, 2018
Science Daily/Elsevier
A study has shown that exposure to violence early in life -- such as physical, emotional, or sexual abuse -- is associated with faster biological aging, including pubertal development and a cellular metric of biological aging called epigenetic age.
"[The findings] demonstrate that different types of early-life adversity can have different consequences for children's development," said senior author Katie McLaughlin, PhD, who completed the study at University of Washington. Poor physical and mental health outcomes associated with early life adversity have been attributed to accelerated development. However, the new findings show that violence- and deprivation-related adversity have different effects on development, indicating that the specific type of adversity should be considered to better understand how an experience will affect a child later in life.
In children who experienced early life violence, accelerated epigenetic aging was associated with increased symptoms of depression. According to the authors, this means that faster biological aging may be one way that early life adversity "gets under the skin" to contribute to later health problems.
The 247 children and adolescents involved in the study were 8-16 years old. "These findings indicate that accelerated aging following exposure to violence early in life can already be detected in children as young as 8 years old," said Dr. McLaughlin.
"With each new study, it seems that our appreciation grows of the enormous and persisting impact of early life exposure to violence. This new knowledge calls for increased societal investment in reducing the exposure of children to violence and for biomedical and psychological research to reduce the impact of these experiences throughout the lives of these vulnerable individuals," said John Krystal, MD, Editor of Biological Psychiatry.
Although researchers don't know if accelerated epigenetic aging is permanent or if it can be reversed, the association between the aging metrics and symptoms of depression in this study may offer a way for doctors to identify children who need help. "Accelerated epigenetic age and pubertal stage could be used to identify youth who are developing faster than expected given their chronological age and who might benefit from intervention. Pubertal stage is an especially useful marker because it is easy and inexpensive to assess by healthcare providers, and could be used to identify youth who may need more intensive health services," said Dr. McLaughlin.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/11/181101133812.htm