TORONTO -- Spanking children may affect their brain development in a similar way as more severe forms of violence, according to a new study by Harvard University researchers.
According to the study, , children who had been spanked had a greater neural response in regions of the prefrontal cortex (PFC) in the brain.
This is the area of the brain that responds to cues in the environment that may be threatening and affects how the individual makes decisions and processes situations, according to the researchers.
鈥淲e know that children whose families use corporal punishment are more likely to develop anxiety, depression, behavior problems, and other mental health problems, but many people don鈥檛 think about spanking as a form of violence,鈥� the study鈥檚 senior researcher, Katie A. McLaughlin, an associate professor of social sciences and director of the Stress & Development Lab at Harvard University, said in a press release.
McLaughlin said they conducted the study because they wanted to examine whether spanking also impacted children on a neurobiological level as they were developing.
For the study, the researchers analyzed data from a large study on children between the ages of three and 11. They particularly focused on 147 children between the ages of 10 and 11 who had been spanked and excluded children who had experienced more severe forms of violence.
In order to test their brain activity, the children lay in a MRI machine and watched images of actors making 鈥渇earful鈥� and 鈥渘eutral鈥� faces on a computer screen. The researchers then compared the brain activity of the children who had been spanked to those who hadn鈥檛 been to see if there were different patterns.
鈥淥n average, across the entire sample, fearful faces elicited greater activation than neutral faces in many regions throughout the brain 鈥� and children who were spanked demonstrated greater activation in multiple regions of PFC to fearful relative to neutral faces than children who were never spanked,鈥� the researchers wrote in the study.
What鈥檚 more, the authors noted, 鈥渢here were no regions of the brain where activation to fearful relative to neutral faces differed between children who were abused and children who were spanked.鈥�
McLaughlin said the findings support similar research on the topic and that 鈥渨hile we might not conceptualize corporal punishment to be a form of violence, in terms of how a child鈥檚 brain responds, it鈥檚 not all that different than abuse鈥t鈥檚 more a difference of degree than of type.鈥�
The researchers said the study is a first step in analyzing the potential effects of spanking on children鈥檚 brain development and lived experiences.
鈥淏y identifying certain neural pathways that explain the consequences of corporal punishment in the brain, we can further suggest that this kind of punishment might be detrimental to children and we have more avenues to explore it,鈥� the study鈥檚 first author, Jorge Cuartas, a Ph.D. student in education, said in the press release.
The academics did note, however, that their findings do not mean that every child experiences corporal punishment in the same way and that some children can be resilient when they鈥檙e exposed to potential adversities.
Both Cuartas and McLaughlin said they hoped the results of their study would help to convince families not to spank their children when they鈥檙e disciplining them.
鈥淲e鈥檙e hopeful that this finding may encourage families not to use this strategy, and that it may open people鈥檚 eyes to the potential negative consequences of corporal punishment in ways they haven鈥檛 thought of before,鈥� McLaughlin said.
