In between faces: Childhood adversity is associated with reduced threat-safety discrimination during facial expression processing in adolescence

Childhood adversity has been associated with alterations in threat-related information processing, including heightened perceptual sensitivity and attention bias towards threatening facial expressions, as well as hostile attributions of neutral faces, although there is a large degree of variability and inconsistency in reported findings. Here, we aimed to implicitly measure neural facial expression processing in 120 adolescents between 12 and 16 years old (M = 13.93) with and without exposure to childhood adversity. We combined fast periodic visual stimulation with electroencephalography in two separate paradigms to assess the neural sensitivity and responsivity towards neutral and expressive, i.e., happy and angry, faces. In contrast to our hypotheses, adolescents exposed to adversity show lower expression-discrimination responses for angry faces presented in between neutral faces and higher expression-discrimination responses for happy faces presented in between neutral faces than unexposed controls. We therefore conclude that childhood adversity is associated with a hostile attribution of neutral faces, thereby reducing the dissimilarity between neutral and angry faces. This interpretation was further supported as adolescents exposed to adversity, but not unexposed controls, showed lower neural responsivity to both angry and neutral faces that were simultaneously presented. This reduced threat-safety discrimination may increase risk for psychopathology in individuals exposed to childhood adversity.