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Early adolescent perceived friendship quality aids affective and neural responses to social inclusion and exclusion in young adults with and without adverse childhood experiences.

Published version
Peer-reviewed

Repository DOI


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Authors

Dauvermann, Maria R  ORCID logo  https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2873-8512
Moreno-Lopéz, Laura 
Vai, Benedetta 
González-García, Nadia 
Orellana, Sofia 

Abstract

Friendships increase mental wellbeing and resilient functioning in young people with childhood adversity (CA). However, the mechanisms of this relationship are unknown. We examined the relationship between perceived friendship quality at age 14 after the experience of CA and reduced affective and neural responses to social exclusion at age 24. Resilient functioning was quantified as psychosocial functioning relative to the degree of CA severity in 310 participants at age 24. From this cohort, 62 young people with and without CA underwent functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging to assess brain responses to social inclusion and exclusion. We observed that good friendship quality was significantly associated with better resilient functioning. Both friendship quality and resilient functioning were related to increased affective responses to social inclusion. We also found that friendship quality, but not resilient functioning, was associated with increased dorsomedial prefrontal cortex responses to peer exclusion. Our findings suggest that friendship quality in early adolescence may contribute to the evaluation of social inclusion by increasing affective sensitivity to positive social experiences and increased brain activity in regions involved in emotion regulation to negative social experiences. Future research is needed to clarify this relationship with resilient functioning in early adulthood.

Description

Acknowledgements: The authors are grateful to the volunteers who took part in these studies, as well as all the members of staff involved in the recruitment process.


Funder: Cambridge NIHR Biomedical Research Centre


Funder: Wolfe Health Fellowship


Funder: NIHR Senior Investigator Award


Funder: Max Planck–UCL Centre for Computational Psychiatry and Ageing

Keywords

childhood adversity, friendships, functional magnetic resonance imaging, resilient functioning, social exclusion, Humans, Male, Female, Friends, Magnetic Resonance Imaging, Young Adult, Adolescent, Adverse Childhood Experiences, Brain, Resilience, Psychological, Adult, Affect, Brain Mapping, Psychological Distance

Journal Title

Soc Cogn Affect Neurosci

Conference Name

Journal ISSN

1749-5016
1749-5024

Volume Title

19

Publisher

Oxford University Press (OUP)
Sponsorship
Wellcome Trust (095844/Z/11/Z)