ABSTRACT
Children’s emotional development is highly dependent on caregiving. When caregiving is disrupted, children are at elevated risk for psychopathology, such as anxiety disorders. Thus, characterizing how caregivers influence children’s emotional neurocircuitry is key to understanding anxiety etiology and prevention. Neuroscientific work on emotional functioning routinely uses threat and safety learning paradigms to chart children’s maturation trajectories, with research in both humans and animals contributing to our understanding. This chapter outlines a neurobiological perspective on how caregivers shape children’s emotional neurocircuitry by: (1) summarizing human and animal neuroscience research on threat and safety learning and its implications for the development of anxiety, (2) outlining neurobiological mechanisms by which caregivers shape their children’s threat and safety learning, and (3) discussing implications for children’s developing conceptualization of threats that extend beyond the laboratory and how caregivers may facilitate safety learning in these contexts. By drawing on data from neuroscience, evolutionary biology, and experimental psychology, and embracing an attachment framework consilient with these data, we can meaningfully approach the question of where feelings of threat and safety originate and clarify the role that caregivers play in shaping them.
