NCJ Number
222038
Journal
Child Abuse & Neglect Volume: 32 Issue: 1 Dated: January 2008 Pages: 139-153
Date Published
January 2008
Length
15 pages
Annotation
This study examined the processing of facial emotions in a sample of maltreated children showing high rates of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
Abstract
Findings indicate experience with maltreatment leads to heightened sensitivity to fearful faces. Treatments may be developed for maltreated children that focus on more normative interpretation of social stimuli, so that ambiguous social encounters are not rapidly identified as threatening. The results suggest that treatments designed to normalize atypical processing of emotion might benefit all maltreated children, not those with psychological symptoms. Atypical processing of emotion and psychopathology symptoms may be two independent outcomes of childhood maltreatment. The study chose fear as the negative emotion of interest, rather than a different threatening emotional state, such as anger. Previous research has demonstrated that fearful and angry faces reflect equal levels of negative emotion and arousal as well as intensity. According to subjective ratings for both types of faces, both fear and anger are likely to be distressing emotional stimuli. Second, although anger might indicate imminent threat for maltreated children, fear also suggests the presence of a threat in the immediate environment. Third, the long-term aim of this research was to understand the neural dysfunction that relates to maltreatment and maltreatment-related psychopathology. This resulted in a task compatible with functional neuroimaging that was designed to measure responses to facial emotions in predicted neural structures. Participants included 46 children (29 maltreated and 17 controls) ranging in age from 8 to 15 years, from ethnically diverse backgrounds. The maltreated children were from Connecticut's Department of Children and Families. Tables, figures, references