Spanking changes way kid’s brain works

Spanking alters a child’s normal neural response to environmental stimuli suggestive of threats, according to a recent study.

“Our findings reveal that spanking was associated with greater activation to fearful versus neutral faces in multiple regions of the prefrontal cortex (PFC),” the researchers said. “Our results suggest that spanking may influence children’s neural response to emotional cues in a way that is qualitatively similar to more severe violence.”

A total of 147 children (mean age 11.60 years, 75 girls) participated in the study and underwent a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) assessment. Using the Violence Exposure Scale for Children-Revised, the researchers ascertained that 40 participants (22 girls) had been spanked in their lifetime.

Using a multi-informant, multi-method approach, 26 participants (17 girls) had ever experienced physical or sexual abuse during childhood. Overall, 107 had never been exposed to spanking or sexual and physical abuse.

During the emotional face task, participants were shown faces expressing fearful or calm expression, as well as faces that were graphically scrambled. MRI readings showed that on average, in the overall study sample, activation in many regions of the brain was greater after seeing fearful vs calm faces. [Child Dev 2021;doi:10.1111/cdev.13565]

Such a response was even more pronounced in children who were spanked, particularly in multiple regions of the PFC, as compared to those who had never been spanked. Moreover, neural reactivity to fearful faces was comparable between children who were spanked and those who were abused.

The scrambled faces were then used to decouple the fearful from the calm faces. The researchers found that the reactivity in the left middle frontal gyrus was statistically comparable between the fearful and scrambled faces, while measurements were significantly different between the scrambled and calm faces (p<0.001).

This suggested that at least in this brain region, “the association between spanking and activation to fearful versus neutral faces was driven primarily by lower activation to neutral faces,” the researchers said.

Performing the same analysis in the dorsomedial PFC showed that spanking drove both the lower activation to calm, neutral faces, as well as the heightened reactivity in response to fearful faces.

“Fearful faces are a signal of potential danger in the environment,” the researchers said. The greater activation in various regions of the PFC could indicate that “spanked children devote greater attentional resources to processing the mental state of others expressing fear, perhaps in the service of understanding the source of that fear, due to greater vigilance to potential threats in the environment.”

Moreover, the present findings also suggest “that spanking may influence children’s neural response to emotional cues in the same way as more severe forms of violence and in the same brain regions where brain structure is altered following more severe corporal punishment and other forms of violence exposure,” they added.

Aside from further studies to better understand the underlying neural mechanisms connecting spanking and cognitive and behavioural problems, there should also be a strong and concrete push against corporal punishment through public education and legal means, the researchers said.