Anxiety, Depression, Neural Interruption More Likely in Adolescents Subjected to Corporal Punishment

While corporal punishment's negative health effects on child and adolescent health and behavior has been established for decades, a new study published in Biological Psychiatry: Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuroimaging demonstrates that physical punishment disrupts brain activity and neurodevelopment.

“Specifically, our paper links corporal punishment to increased neural sensitivity to making errors and decreased neural sensitivity to receiving rewards in adolescence…Corporal punishment[…]might alter specific neurodevelopmental pathways that increase risk for anxiety and depression by making children hypersensitive to their own mistakes and less reactive to rewards and other positive events in their environment,” said lead author Kreshnik Burani, MS, who works with Greg Hajcak, PhD, at Florida State University.

Researchers utilized a longitudinal study design to examine how corporal punishment affected adolescents’ neural responses to error and to reward. The participants included 149 boys and girls from ages 11 to 14 who performed a video game-like task and a monetary guessing game while their brain wave activity was measured through electroencephalography (EEG). EEG data informed the assignment of 2 scores per participant, one evaluating their response to error and the other their response to reward.

>>News: Children May Be Especially Vulnerable to Disturbed Sleep, Depressive Symptoms Spirals

Two years later, the researchers followed up with the study participants and their parents to complete questionnaires that assess for anxiety, depression, and manner of parenting, including the Stress and Adversity Inventory (STRAIN).

As researchers hypothesized, adolescents that that experienced corporal punishment expressed heightened negatively to errors, a “blunted” positivity response to rewards, and overall reported more symptoms of depression and anxiety.

“Corporal punishment appears to potentiate neural response to errors and decrease neural response to rewards, which could increase risk for anxiety and depressive symptoms,” Burani and co-authors concluded.

References

Burani K, Brush CJ, Spahr C, et al. Corporal punishment is uniquely associated with a greater neural response to errors and blunted neural response to rewards in adolescence. Biol Psychiatry Cogn Neurosci Neuroimaging. Published online September 21, 2022. Doi: 10.1016/j.bpsc.2022.09.004.

Corporal punishment affects brain activity, anxiety, and depression. News Release. Elsevier. Published online November 16, 2022. Accessed November 30, 2022.