The Characteristics Of Cognitive Flexibility And Related Neural Mechanism In Individuals With Different Attachment Style

In order to cope with the changing social environment,human beings need to constantly switch back and forth between different tasks according to environmental clues and their inner goals.The process of switching from one task to another is called task switching,which is an important component of human cognitive control ability and reflects individual cognitive flexibility.Many individual differences affecting task switching have been found.For example,the density and intensity of periodic connections in the prefrontal cortex,individual personality characteristics,individual sensitivity to rewards,individual motivation tendency,and the emotional regulation strategies that individuals tend to adopt in emotional information processing are all related to individual differences in task switching.However,up to now,the source of individual differences in task switching is still unclear,especially when the task contains emotional information.Therefore,from the perspective of individual differences,the current study introduces the concept of attachment style to explore how attachment style affects cognitive flexibility of individuals.Especially,when emotional information exists in tasks,the impact of attachment style on emotional task switching ability and its corresponding neurological processes.According to adult attachment theory,the attachment style formed in the early attachment history will evolve into individual characteristics over time and maintain moderate stability after adulthood,thus affecting the subsequent cognition and behavior of individuals.Studies from human and animal experiments have found that early attachment experiences affect the development of the brain,leading to permanent changes in brain structure and function,which are manifested in subsequent cognitive and behavioral changes.Since adult attachment styles developfrom early attachment experiences and remain relatively stable,it can be inferred that individuals with different attachment styles exhibit differences in brain structure and function,and this difference can also be reflected in individual's cognition and behavior.Therefore,combined with the existing research on attachment style and brain development,current research aims to explore how individual differences in attachment style affect the performance of individuals on cognitive flexibility through changes in brain structure and function,and how individual differences in attachment style reflect individual's task switching ability when emotional information exists in tasks.Study 1 explores the characteristics of general cognitive flexibility of individuals with three attachment styles,and combines neuroimaging data(structure and rest)and cognitive flexibility behavior data of different attachment styles to conduct path analysis to explore the influence of attachment styles on general cognitive flexibility.Firstly,subjects were asked to fill in the "the Experiences in Close Relationships Scale","interpersonal relationship questionnaire" and "cognitive flexibility questionnaire" to get individual's attachment score and cognitive flexibility score.Then,the behavioral score measured was combined with the structural and resting data to explore the relationships among changes in brain structure and function as well as cognitive flexibility of individuals with different attachment styles.In the end,48 effective subjects were selected,including 15 safe attachment individuals,16 avoidance attachment individuals and 17 anxiety attachment individuals.The results showed that there were differences in the gray matter volume of a series of brain regions in three groups of individuals with attachment styles,including amygdala,prefrontal cortex(inferior frontal gyrus,middle frontal gyrus and superior frontal gyrus),parietal cortex(inferior parietal lobule and superior marginal gyrus),temporal lobe(left middle temporal gyrus,left inferior temporal gyrus and right superior temporal gyrus)and parahippocampal gyrus.Subsequently,the brain regions obtained from brain structural analysis were used as seed points for functional connectivity analysis.Finally,seven pairs of functional connections with different attachment styles were obtained,which mainly included left cuneiform lobe,right inferior frontal gyrus,left inferior temporal gyrus,right superior temporal gyrus,right superior frontal gyrus,right anterior cuneiform lobe and right middle cingulate gyrus.In order to further explore the relationship among attachment style,gray matter structure and functional connectivity and cognitive flexibility,we tested them in attachment style.The results of mediatingeffect analysis showed that the volume of gray matter in left middle temporal gyrus and right anterior cuneiform lobe played a mediating role between attachment style and cognitive flexibility;in the intensity of brain functional connectivity,the connectivity intensity of right inferior frontal gyrus-left assisted motor area,right middle cingulate gyrus-right superior frontal gyrus,right superior frontal gyrus-left insula and right superior frontal gyrus-left assisted motor area also mediates attachment style and cognitive flexibility.The second study used the emotion-gender task-switching paradigm to explore the influence of different attachment styles on task-switching ability and corresponding neurological processes in emotional information processing,and to study the cognitive flexibility of individuals with safe,avoidant and anxious attachment styles in emotional information processing.The participants were asked to complete a classic task of emotional-gender task switching while receiving an fMRI scan.There are two main tasks: emotional judgment and gender judgment.Event-related functional magnetic resonance experiment design was used to describe the differences in emotional-gender task switching and the underlying neurological processes among individuals with three attachment styles by repeated measurements of variance and activation analysis.Functional magnetic resonance analysis does not distinguish the experimental conditions,but only considers the emotional and gender switching experimental conditions.The experiment compared the differences of neurological activity in emotional and non-emotional switching between the three attachment style groups by comparing emotional switching,gender switching and emotional switching conditions minus gender switching.The magnetic resonance imaging data of 72 subjects were collected.Among them,20 were safe attachment,25 were avoidance attachment and 27 were anxiety attachment.The results of behavioral data analysis showed that all attachment styles responded more slowly than those of repetitive ones,and responded more frequently to emotional judgment tasks than to gender judgment tasks,showing an asymmetric switching cost.In addition,the individuals in the safe attachment group showed an obvious emotional dominance effect in the process of changing from emotional judgment task to gender judgment task,that is,the switching cost of emotional judgment task was higher than that of gender judgment task;the switching cost of emotional judgment task in the anxious attachment group and avoidance attachment group was higher than that of gender judgment task,showed a greater emotional disturbance effect.Activation analysis showed that the emotionalswitching minus gender switching conditions showed a series of positive activation effects in the right suboccipital gyrus,middle occipital gyrus,left middle temporal gyrus,right superior temporal gyrus,bilateral superior marginal gyrus,right inferior frontal gyrus and left middle frontal gyrus.These activated brain areas include some of the main brain areas involved in the task switching process and are consistent with a general frontal-parietal control network.Subsequently,one-way ANOVA showed that there were significant differences in brain activation in the right superior marginal gyrus among the three attachment styles.The activation degree in the safe attachment group was significantly lower than that in the anxious attachment group,and the activation degree in the avoidance attachment group was also significantly lower than that in the anxious attachment group.Combining the experimental results of Study 1 and Study 2,the current research results show that individual attachment style is related to individual differences in cognitive flexibility.Safe attachment outperforms anxiety attachment and avoidance attachment in general cognitive flexibility.Moreover,attachment style affects cognitive flexibility by affecting the differences in gray matter volume and functional connectivity.Among them,only attachment anxiety scores can regulate the relationship between the differences in gray matter volume and functional connectivity and cognitive flexibility.In addition,individual differences in attachment styles also have an important impact on cognitive flexibility in the process of emotional information processing.Compared with safe attachment,insecure attachment individuals have greater difficulties in the conversion of emotional and non-emotional tasks,and it is more difficult to carry out flexible cognitive conversion.This study provides new evidence for exploring the source of individual differences in task switching from the perspective of individual differences.In addition,this study confirms the influence of attachment style on brain development from the perspective of brain plasticity,and finds the dominant effect of safe attachment in emotional information processing,which provides a theoretical basis for improving the flexible control ability of insecure attachment individuals in emotional information processing by using safe attachment priming.