The role of developmental caregiving programming in modulating our affiliation tendency and the vulnerability to social anxiety and eating disorders

Abstract

Attachment is the evolutionarily-established process through which humans create bonds with others to receive care from them. The phenomenon is as essential to our physical survival as it is to our psychological development. An increasing number of studies demonstrates that in sensitive periods during the early years of life, our brain circuitry is programmed in the interactions with our caregivers, with the imprinting of information over multiple attachment dimensions. Adopting a basic brain-computer analogy, we can think of this knowledge as the psycho-social firmware of our mind. According to a recently proposed extension of the classical three-dimensional view, one attachment dimension - somaticity - concerns the caregiver's task of reflecting and confirming the child's (internal) states - such as sensations, emotions, and representations - to support the child's ability to identify and define those entities autonomously. Relying on multidisciplinary evidence - from neuroscientific, developmental, evolutionary, and clinical sources - we suggest that somaticity (H1) has the adaptive function to modulate our tendency to comply and affiliate with a reference group but also (H2) increases the vulnerability to developing Social Anxiety (SA) and Eating Disorders (EDs). We evaluate H1-H2, (1) indicating the evolutionary role of somaticity in modulating our affiliation tendency to optimize the ancestral threat-opportunity balance coming from infectious diseases and (2) showing the deep connection between SA-EDs and the features most closely related to somaticity - interoception and parenting style. Finally, we discuss three relevant implications of H1-H2: (A) Bringing into research focus the adaptive role of our firmware knowledge system versus the hardware (neural substrate) and software (higher cognition) ones. (B) Complementing the well-grounded Objectification and Allocentric Lock Theories, allowing us to integrate multiple levels of explanation on the etiology of psychopathology. (C) Suggesting the design of new psychological treatments. While not aiming to prove H1-H2, our analysis supports them and encourages their direct testing.

Keywords: caregiving programming; eating disorders; evolution; imprinting; mental disorders; sensitive period; social anxiety; somaticity.

Figure 1

Our hypotheses. H1 [Adaptive value of somaticity]: During childhood, caregiving induces the child’s adaptive programming over several attachment dimensions. According to H1, somaticity provides optimal modulation of the tendency to comply and affiliate. H2 [Possible drawback of somaticity]: Later in life, if the context, for some reason, does not match the one for which somaticity was programmed, maladaptive somatic functioning may arise. H2 suggests vulnerability to SA and EDs.

Figure 2

Acquisition and purpose of the attachment dimensions. (A) The environment poses adaptive pressures and affects (B) caregiving practices, which program the child’s attachment-related adaptation. (C) In attachment interactions, the caregiver conveys environmental cues that are translated into attachment data and (D) used to modulate motivation. Avoidance and ambivalence control (in different ways) the motivation to attach. Disorganization affects the defense system. We propose here that somaticity concerns our tendency to affiliate. (In future works, we will suggest phobicity, depressivity, and obsessivity modulate self-care, ranking, and caregiving, respectively). This mechanism allows the child to adapt to their caregiver first and their more general environment progressively in life.

Figure 3

Knowledge and social hierarchies. In this work, we refer to a minimal three-layer knowledge hierarchy, distinguishing between hardware, firmware, and software (left). Each data level corresponds to a social one (center). Our neural system encodes information in its structure (hardware). Our close relationships are the source of the implicit knowledge instantiating our attachment dimensions (firmware). And groups – of any size – provide us with explicit, verbalizable information (software). Finally, each of these levels is the primary target of specific theories of mental functioning and disorders (right). H1-H2 concern the firmware level and extend the Attachment-Personality Theory (APT) with respect to somaticity. On the other hand, the Allocentric Lock Theory (ALT) and Objectification Theory (OT) focus on the hardware and software levels, respectively.