Association between attachment anxiety and the gaze direction-related N170

Attachment theory suggests that interindividual differences in attachment security versus insecurity (anxiety and avoidance) contribute to the ways in which people perceive social emotional signals, particularly from the human face. Among different facial features, eye gaze conveys crucial information for social interaction, with a straight gaze triggering different cognitive and emotional processes as compared to an averted gaze. It remains unknown, however, how interindividual differences in attachment associate with early face encoding in the context of a straight versus averted gaze. Using electroencephalography (EEG) and recording event-related potentials (ERPs), specifically the N170 component, the present study (N = 50 healthy adults) measured how the characteristics of attachment anxiety and avoidance relate to the encoding of faces with respect to gaze direction and head orientation. Our findings reveal a significant relationship between gaze direction (irrespective of head orientation) and attachment anxiety on the interhemispheric (i.e. right) asymmetry of the N170 and thus provide evidence for an association between attachment anxiety and eye gaze processing during early visual face encoding.