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Updated: Sep 6, 2025

Neuroimaging Field Methods Using Functional Near Infrared Spectroscopy NIRS Neuroimaging to Study Global Child Development: Rural Sub-Saharan Africa
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Neuroimaging Field Methods Using Functional Near Infrared Spectroscopy NIRS Neuroimaging to Study Global Child Development: Rural Sub-Saharan Africa

Published on: February 2, 2018

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Association of psychosocial adversity and social information processing in children raised in a low-resource setting:

Laura Pirazzoli1, Eileen Sullivan2, Wanze Xie3

  • 1Labs of Cognitive Neuroscience, Division of Developmental Medicine, Boston Children's Hospital, Boston, MA, USA; Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA.

Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience
|June 28, 2022
PubMed

Insights

Psychosocial adversity impacts social processing in toddlers more than infants. Early life risk factors affect how children process social cues, particularly from 24 months onward.

Area of Science:

  • Neuroscience
  • Developmental Psychology
  • Child Development

Background:

  • Low socioeconomic status (SES) is linked to compromised social cognition and socioemotional development in children.
  • The precise mechanisms connecting early life psychosocial risk factors to social processing deficits are not fully understood.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate cortical responses to social stimuli in children from low-resource settings using functional Near Infrared Spectroscopy (fNIRS).
  • To examine the relationship between psychosocial risk factors and social information processing across early development.

Main Methods:

  • Utilized fNIRS to measure brain activity in response to a social discrimination task in children at 6, 24, and 36 months.
  • Assessed psychosocial risk factors using the Childhood Psychosocial Adversity Scale (CPAS).

Main Results:

  • Cortical specialization for social stimuli was observed in all age groups.
  • Psychosocial risk factors, including intimate partner violence, verbal abuse, family conflict, and maternal depression, were associated with altered social discrimination at 24 and 36 months, but not at 6 months.

Conclusions:

  • Exposure to psychosocial adversity significantly impacts social information processing during toddlerhood (24-36 months) compared to infancy (6 months).
  • These findings highlight the critical developmental window in toddlerhood for interventions aimed at mitigating the effects of early adversity on social development.

Keywords:
InfancyLow and middle income countriesPsychosocial adversitySocial cognitionfNIRS

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