5 125 Neural signatures of parental empathic responses to imagined suffering of their adolescent child compensation. Participants provided informed consent for each individual testing day. The average number of days between the first and second appointment was 53 (SD = 46) and ranged between 13 and 265 days. Measures and materials Parental empathy task The validated parental empathy task is a newly developed functional MRI paradigm. In the parental empathy task, parents were shown 16 sentences describing physically or socially unpleasant situations that involved either themselves, their own child, or an unfamiliar child. The paradigm allows for comparisons of empathic responding toward someone’s own child and an unfamiliar child, as well as to isolate processes associated with other-oriented distress compared to self-oriented distress (i.e., imagined suffering for someone else versus imagined suffering for the self). The latter contrast provides insight into whether distinct brain regions were activated between the self and other perspective of parents (i.e., brain regions relevant for self-other distinction), which might strengthen the idea that our task elicits processes involved in empathy for others in parents. Moreover, by including both physically (i.e., having a fractured leg) and socially (i.e., being humiliated by others) unpleasant situations the task covered a wide range of adverse events, contributing to the ecological validity of the task. Participants were instructed to imagine the situations as vividly as possible for the particular person involved. Subsequently, they were shown a picture of an unfamiliar adolescent boy or girl accompanied by its age and school grade, which were matched to their own child’s demographic information. Each trial started with a fixation cross (2000-4000 ms), after which participants were presented with a picture of a person (i.e., either themselves, their own child, or the unfamiliar child) and a sentence describing a physically or socially unpleasant situation (e.g. self condition: “You were bullied by others”; own child condition: “[Name own child] was bullied by others”; unfamiliar child condition: “[Lotte/Lucas] was bullied by others”) for 5000 ms (see Figure 5.1 and Supplement S5.1-A). After a delay (5000 ms) a question was presented below the statement probing selfreported affective distress while imagining an unpleasant situation (i.e., “How do you feel about this?”). Participants could rate their distress on a 7-point Likert scale, ranging from 1 (not negative at all) to 7 (very negative). Participants were instructed to answer and confirm the question within 8000 ms. They could press any button to display a box around the middle option and then press the button corresponding to their right index (to go left) and right middle finger (to go right) to move the box to their preferred answer. They could confirm their answer by pressing a button corresponding to their left index finger. Two stimulus types (eight physically unpleasant and eight socially unpleasant situations, see also Supplement S5.1-A) with in total 16 sentences were shown for each perspective (i.e., self, own child and unfamiliar child) resulting in 48 trials in total, divided in two blocks of 24 trials. All trials were presented in random order with no more than two subsequent trials with the same perspective, and no consecutive trials with the same sentence.
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MjY0ODMw