Children who experience profound neglect have been found to be more prone to a behavior known as “indiscriminate friendliness,” characterized by an inappropriate willingness to approach adults, including strangers.

Children who experience profound neglect have been found to be more prone to a behavior known as “indiscriminate friendliness”.

Indiscriminate friendliness is when a young child approaches and interacts with a stranger in exactly the same way they would with their primary caregiver i.e. a parent, a foster parent or someone who takes care of them.

A team of U.S. researchers are now reporting some of the first evidence from human studies suggesting that ‘this behavior is rooted in brain adaptations associated with early-life experiences’.

67 youths between the ages of 4 and 17 underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) while they were shown pictures of their adoptive mother and of an unfamiliar female.

Approximately half the children had spent time in institutions such as motherless babies homes, ranging from five months to about five-and-a-half years, before being adopted.

As part of the study, the adoptive parents of the participating children were given a questionnaire designed to gauge the likelihood of their child wandering away with a stranger, as well as how trusting the child was with new adults.

The noticed that the children who had experienced profound neglect were more prone to “indiscriminate friendliness”.

Aviva Olsavsky, a resident physician in psychiatry at the Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior at UCLA and the one of the study’s authors adds that:

“The early relationship between children and their parents or primary caregivers has implications for their social interaction later in life, and we believe the amygdala is involved in this process.”

 

“Our findings suggest that even for children who have formed attachments to their adoptive parents, this early period of deprivation has led to changes in the brain that were likely adaptations and that may persist over time.”

Nim Tottenham, an associate professor of psychology at UCLA and one the study’s authors explains that:

“(Indiscriminate friendliness) can be a very frightening behavior for parents.”

 

“The stranger anxiety or wariness that young children typically show is a sign that they understand their parents are very special people who are their source of security. That early emotional attachment serves as a bedrock for many of the developmental processes that follow.”

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