1 11 General introduction (Eisenberger & Cole, 2012). Strong social connections with others are crucial for one’s mental and physical well-being, and are thought to be even more important for a strong parent-child bond (Ainsworth et al., 1978; Bowlby, 1969). As such, it is hardly surprising that negative social experiences (e.g., childhood emotional maltreatment) or circumstances that negatively affect (the perception of) these social connections (e.g., adolescent depression) may cause disturbances in the ability to interact with others, both within and outside the parent-child context. Extending our knowledge about neural and affective processes underlying this socio-emotional connection between parents and adolescents in well-functioning families may serve as a strong foundation for the understanding of difficulties and disturbances in this connectedness in dysfunctional family systems in which the parent-child bond may be at stake. Moreover, this will pave the way for the development of suitable interventions focusing on repairing this connection between parents and adolescents, which will potentially limit further harm due to family dysfunction. This thesis aimed to elucidate the neural and affective signatures of socio-emotional connectedness between parents and their adolescent child. This was operationalized by the assessment of two key processes in parent-child interactions: Eye contact and empathy. These two processes are highly important for the parent-child bond. Moreover, I further aimed to investigate two inter-individual characteristics that may explain differences in parents’ and adolescents’ ability to connect with each other on a socio-emotional level: A history of childhood emotional maltreatment in parents and adolescent depression. In order to do this, several behavioral and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) paradigms were used with a multimethod approach, including self-report measures of affective responses, functional neuroimaging assessed by blood-oxygen-level-dependent (BOLD-)activation in the brain, and gaze responses assessed with eye-tracking. This not only enabled us to examined how parents and adolescents feel, but also how they respond at the level of their gaze and brain when connecting with each other (see Figure 1.1 for a schematic overview of the chapters in this thesis). The remainder of this chapter introduces a conceptual framework for the empirical studies described in this thesis and the RE-PAIR (Relations and Emotions in Parent-Adolescent Interaction Research) study within which the data collection took place.
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