Corporal Punishment and Elevated Neural Response to Threat in Children

Abstract

Spanking remains common around the world, despite evidence linking corporal punishment to detrimental child outcomes. This study tested whether children (M_age = 11.60) who were spanked (N = 40) exhibited altered neural function in response to stimuli that suggest the presence of an environmental threat compared to children who were not spanked (N = 107). Children who were spanked exhibited greater activation in multiple regions of the medial and lateral prefrontal cortex (PFC), including 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 findings suggest that spanking may alter neural responses to environmental threats in a manner similar to more severe forms of maltreatment.

Figure 1.

The emotional face task.

Figure 2.

Brain regions with significantly greater activation, on average, to fearful compared to neutral faces.¹ Note. The difference between activation to fearful versus neutral faces was greatest in regions depicted in yellow and lower, but still statistically significant, in regions depicted in red.

Figure 3.

Differences in neural reactivity to fearful versus neutral faces between spanked and never spanked children. Note. Regions where spanked children exhibit significantly greater activation to fearful versus neutral faces than never spanked children. Regions where the magnitude of increased activation to fearful versus neutral faces in spanked children was the largest are depicted in yellow, and smaller but still statistically significant are depicted in red. dACC = dorsal anterior cingulate cortex; MFG = middle frontal gyrus; SFG = superior frontal gyrus; dmPFC = dorsal medial prefrontal cortex.