Pascal Vrticka

Objective: This paper investigates how fathers' role beliefs relate to their involvement, sensitivity, and parenting stress. Background: Research has consistently shown that fathers play an important role in children's development across multiple dimensions, including their presence in children's lives or the quality of their interactions. However, less is known about how fathers' perceptions of their parenting role relate to the ways in which they engage in fathering. The current study focuses on fathers' role beliefs and how these are associated to different domains of parenting, that is, observed paternal sensitivity, paternal involvement, and parenting stress. Method: The sample consisted of 60 fathers and their preschool‐aged children. Fathers reported their beliefs of the fathers' role in the Role of the Father Questionnaire. Paternal involvement and parenting stress were also assessed using questionnaires. Paternal sensitivity was coded from behavioral observation during a semi‐structured father–child interaction. Results: The central finding shows that fathers' role beliefs were associated not only with self‐reports but also with observed paternal sensitivity. Regression analyses revealed fathers' role beliefs were linked to paternal sensitivity and parenting stress. Conclusion: Fathers who considered themselves to play a significant role in their child's development interacted more sensitively with their children and reported less parenting stress. Implications: Interventions aiming to foster paternal sensitivity should simultaneously target fathers' role beliefs, highlighting that their presence and availability matter for their child's development. Promoting paternal identification of being a sensitive father may be an important starting point to support child development in the longer term.

Humans are highly social, and much of that sociality is regulatory: individuals manage the demands placed upon their bodies not only alone but through and with others. Attachment science has pursued how the brain accomplishes this for the better part of a century, and its most recent contribution has been neurobiological. Within the Social Neuroscience of Human Attachment (SoNeAt) programme, we previously specified a neuroanatomical architecture of two interacting systems and four domain-general modules for organised attachment, extended it to attachment disruption and disorganisation, and moved it from single brains to dyads through hyperscanning as part of Relational Neuroscience. What that work established energetically, through social allostasis, it did not specify computationally. Here we close that gap. Drawing on active inference, allostasis as interoceptive inference, and recent constructs of attachment as prediction, we propose the term social allostatic inference: the attachment system is one predictive-allostatic loop, the four modules are its successive stages, and organised, disrupted, and disorganised attachment are characteristic settings of the precision parameters that govern it. We extend the account to the caregiving system, which shares this architecture but infers rather than senses both the error that initiates its loop and the signal that terminates it. At the level of the dyad, interpersonal neural and bio-behavioural synchrony are read as indices of where regulatory work is invested rather than of bond quality directly. We address persistent misconceptions in trauma-informed practice and set out a measurement programme.

Leadership research has catalogued many styles, among them transformational, authentic and servant leadership, but has offered few accounts of the regulatory mechanisms through which leader-follower relationships operate. We propose that attachment, understood through social neuroscience, supplies one such mechanism. Humans regulate environmental demands relationally, and attachment organises this social regulation of a finite bioenergetic budget under challenge. When followers face threat, dependence or uncertainty, this relationship can come to serve attachment functions, and the leader's reliability as a security provider bears on how much of followers' regulatory resources remains available for work. Building on the Social Neuroscience of Human Attachment (SoNeAt), we develop an attachment-informed leadership (AIL) framework spanning social allostasis, attachment and caregiving, predictive regulation and biobehavioural synchrony. We position AIL relative to evolutionary accounts of leadership and derive nine propositions that distinguish attachment processes from exchange, trust and identification, measurable from self-report to physiology and brain activity.

The parent-child relationship is crucial for children's socio-emotional development. Previous research, mostly in mothers of infants, has implicated neural networks subserving reward, saliency, and theory of mind (ToM). In this preregistered study, we sought to extend these findings to fathers and older children by examining maternal and paternal brain responses to preschool-aged children’s emotional faces. Our investigation included 89 parents (41 mothers, 48 fathers) and their children (44 daughters, 45 sons). We examined the effects of children’s facial identity (own, unknown) and emotion (happy, neutral, sad) on parental neural activity and tested for associations with parental and child biological sex as well as parental involvement and sensitivity. Whole-brain analyses revealed differential neural activation within saliency and ToM networks related to children’s identity (own > unknown), and in the postcentral gyrus related to both children’s emotion (own sad > own happy) and biological sex. Notably, mothers’ and fathers’ neural responses were comparable. Subsequent ROI analyses, however, revealed a distinct parent by child biological sex interaction, because fathers showed less ventromedial prefrontal cortex recruitment to daughters’ happy faces with increasing parental sensitivity. Taken together, this study advances our understanding of the neural underpinnings of parents’, and specifically fathers’ emotional child face processing.

The preschool years are crucial for school readiness, with the child-parent attachment relationship providing a foundational context for skill acquisition as part of this transition. Advances in social neuroscience suggest that interpersonal neural synchrony (INS) represents a valuable index of interaction and relationship quality. We examined whether parent-child INS during a parent-guided learning task was associated with observed parental interaction behavior and narrative child attachment representations. INS in bilateral frontal and temporoparietal cortex was assessed using functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) hyperscanning in ninety-three parents (51 fathers) and their biological children (aged 5-6 years, 48 girls) while parents guided children through cognitive exercises. Parental interaction behavior was assessed using video-coded NICHD sensitivity scales, and children’s attachment representations were indexed by narrative coherence using the Picture Story Stem Battery (PSSB). Results revealed specific region-dependent functional patterns. A positive correlation between parental respect for autonomy and quality of assistance with bilateral prefrontal INS possibly reflecting cognitive scaffolding. Furthermore, INS in the left prefrontal cortex positively correlated with child task performance and mediated the relationship between parental assistance and task success. In contrast, temporoparietal INS, particularly in mother-child dyads, possibly reflected relational and regulatory processes. While child attachment security positively correlated with right temporoparietal INS, maternal hostility negatively correlated with bilateral temporoparietal INS. Taken together, our findings suggest that INS in the prefrontal and temporoparietal cortex may serve as a differential neurobiological correlate of dyadic coordination, possibly capturing both the relational quality of the child-parent attachment bond and the efficacy of parental scaffolding in supporting early learning.

Neuropsychiatric polygenic indices (NPGIs) are used as genetic predictors of poor mental health. However, NPGIs are also associated with environmental factors which could affect mental health in adulthood, including the rearing environment. Hence, their “genetic” effects are both direct and environmentally mediated. There is a need to identify alternative genetic predictors without environmental signal. Endophenotype-based polygenic indices (EPGIs) trained on brain structure and function are under-studied alternatives which, due to their relative biological proximity, may exhibit associations with mental health outcomes which are less environmentally mediated than those of NPGIs. Using four representative UK samples ( Understanding Society ; UKHLS, NCDS, BCS70 and MCS) we employ sex-stratified path models to estimate the direct and environmentally mediated effects of eleven NPGIs and 30 EPGIs on adult mental health, focussing on the rearing environment. The depression NPGI is consistently associated with mental health symptoms across most sex-stratified sub-samples (best meta-analysis β = 0.091, p 0.001) but demonstrates 1.6–24.5% environmental mediation. Seven other NPGIs and three EPGIs show sample- and sex-specific associations with mental health symptoms. NPGIs for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, depression and substance use disorder are robustly associated with measures of the rearing environment, which in turn are frequently associated with mental health symptoms. Sensitivity analyses find that NPGI associations vary substantially depending on who is included in the sample. In conclusion, the rearing environment likely mediates a substantial portion of NPGIs’ so-called “genetic” effects on mental health symptoms, but EPGIs are not currently powerful enough to replace them.

Neuropsychiatric polygenic indices (NPGIs) are used as genetic predictors of poor mental health. However, NPGIs are also associated with environmental factors which could affect mental health in adulthood, including the rearing environment. Hence, their “genetic” effects are both direct and environmentally mediated. There is a need to identify alternative genetic predictors without environmental signal. Endophenotype-based polygenic indices (EPGIs) trained on brain structure and function are under-studied alternatives which, due to their relative biological proximity, may exhibit associations with mental health outcomes which are less environmentally mediated than those of NPGIs. Using four representative UK samples ( Understanding Society ; UKHLS, NCDS, BCS70 and MCS) we employ sex-stratified path models to estimate the direct and environmentally mediated effects of eleven NPGIs and 30 EPGIs on adult mental health, focussing on the rearing environment. The depression NPGI is consistently associated with mental health symptoms across most sex-stratified sub-samples (best meta-analysis β = 0.091, p 0.001) but demonstrates 1.6 - 24.5% environmental mediation. Seven other NPGIs and three EPGIs show sample- and sex-specific associations with mental health symptoms. NPGIs for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, depression and substance use disorder are robustly associated with measures of the rearing environment, which in turn are frequently associated with mental health symptoms. Sensitivity analyses find that NPGI associations vary substantially depending on who is included in the sample. In conclusion, the rearing environment likely mediates a substantial portion of NPGIs’ so-called “genetic” effects on mental health symptoms, but EPGIs are not currently powerful enough to replace them.

Adverse caregiving experiences are thought to bias internal representations of self and others, giving rise to negative expectations that generalize to new encounters. However, few studies examine whether cues signaling resemblance to caregivers selectively increase the odds of generalization. In this preregistered study, 133 participants were assessed for maltreatment at two waves (n = 65 maltreated; ages 4–16 and 11–24 years). At the second wave, participants played Cyberball. Following social exclusion, participants re-engaged with two novel co-players, who ostensibly introduced themselves via self-descriptive blurbs: The Target implicitly resembled the participant’s caregiver, whereas the Control resembled someone else’s caregiver. The co-players threw the ball to participants (re-inclusions) or not (re-exclusions) at equal rates. We assessed event-related cardiac slowing, a correlate of expectancy violation. Cardiac slowing to Target was most pronounced in younger participants and declined with age, suggesting that caregiver cues exert a stronger influence on peer interactions at younger ages. Supporting our pre-registered hypotheses, during re-exclusions, maltreated participants showed greater cardiac slowing to Control vs. Target, whereas nonmaltreated participants exhibited the opposite pattern. We conclude that, for maltreated individuals, re-exclusion violates expectancies less when stemming from caregiver-like targets, implying that resemblance cues trigger selective generalization during early psychophysiological processing.

Human social interactions rely on the ability to reflect on one’s own and others’ internal states and traits—a process known as mentalizing. Impaired or altered mentalizing is a hallmark of multiple psychiatric and neurodevelopmental conditions. Yet, replicable and easily testable brain markers of mentalizing have so far been lacking. Here, we apply an interpretable machine learning approach to multiple datasets (total n = 390) to train and validate fMRI brain signatures that predict i) mentalizing about the self, ii) mentalizing about another person, and iii) both types of mentalizing. Self-mentalizing and other-mentalizing classifiers had positive weights in anterior/medial and posterior/lateral brain areas, respectively, with accuracy rates of 82% and 77% for out-of-sample prediction. The classifier trained across both types of mentalizing showed 98% predictive accuracy and separated (mental) attributional from factual inferences. Classifier patterns revealed better self/other separation in healthy adults compared to individuals with schizophrenia and with increasing age in adolescence. Together, our findings reveal consistent and separable neural patterns subserving trait-based mentalizing about self and others—present at least from the age of adolescence and functionally altered in severe neuropsychiatric disorders. These mentalizing signatures hold promise as candidate neuromarkers of social-cognitive processes in different contexts and clinical conditions.

Attachment theory, with its core concepts, perspectives, and insights developed over the past five decades, is influential for professionals working with young children. However, practitioners face challenges translating attachment theory and research into practical applications. This manifests in attachment myths, theoretical misinterpretations, and inconsistency of application. This state‐of‐the‐art review is authored by 47 attachment researchers and practitioners and examines key insights from attachment theory to facilitate attachment‐aware practice for professionals working with children and their caregivers. Following the ongoing debate on practical relevance in attachment theory, we present both ‘strict’ and ‘expansive’ translational perspectives on applications for addressing preventative or clinical attachment concerns. We first review core attachment propositions, based on replicated research of attachment and caregiving. We next address common misconceptions that hinder adequate practical applications. We present measures of attachment and sensitive parenting that might be helpful for practitioners. We also review evidence‐based and promising attachment interventions, discussing core components of (preventative) support for parents or caregivers and the children in their care. We emphasize that attachment theory's clinical value lies not in assigning attachment classifications, but rather in understanding crucial insights into caregiving and early socioemotional development (e.g., secure base phenomena; the value of safe, stable, and shared good‐enough care), developed in attachment research over the past 50 years, that may inform policy and clinical reasoning and areas for prevention and intervention.