Final Flashcards
According to the U.S. Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act, what’s child maltreatment?
Any recent act or failure to act on the part of a parent or caretaker, which results in death, serious physical or
emotional harm, sexual abuse, or exploitation, or an act or failure to act, which presents an imminent risk of serious harm to a child
What’s physical abuse?
- Punching, beating, kicking, burning, shaking, or otherwise physically harming a child
- Often unintentional and resulting from severe physical punishment
What’s neglect?
- Child’s basic needs are not being met
- Different types of neglect: physical, educational, emotional
What’s physical neglect?
- Failure to provide for a child’s basic physical needs
- Ex: refusal of or delay in seeking health care, inadequate provision of food, abandonment, expulsion from the home or refusal to allow a runaway to return home, inadequate supervision, and inadequate provision of clean clothes
What’s educational neglect?
- Failure to provide for a child’s basic educational needs
- Ex: allowing chronic nonattendance, failing to enroll a child of mandatory school age in school, and failing to attend to a special educational need
What’s emotional neglect?
- Failure to provide for a child’s basic emotional needs
- Ex: marked inattention to the child’s needs for affection, refusal of or failure to provide needed psychological care, spousal abuse in the child’s presence, and permission for drug or alcohol use by the child
What’s sexual abuse?
- Abusive acts that are sexual in nature
- Ex: touching genitals, intercourse, exhibitionism, production of pornographic photos
What’s emotional abuse?
Repeated acts by parents or caregivers that could or have caused serious behavioral, cognitive, emotional or mental disorders
What are the challenges of studying the incidence and prevalence of child abuse?
- People may not be willing to report this
- Relies on identified cases
- Retrospective report (ex: asking adults what happened to them 10-15 yrs ago as a child)
What are the one-year incidence rates of child abuse?
- US = 12.1/1000 children
- Canada = 9.7/1000 children
- Explanation: US has higher rates of poverty and it’s much harder to get access to adequate + affordable health care
In an anonymous survey, what percentage of parents report using forms of physical punishment that constitute child abuse (ex: hitting the child with an object)?
Responding anonymously, 10% of parents report using forms of physical punishment that constitute child abuse (ex: hitting the child with an object)
Studies and treatment of child maltreatment have focused on what kind of abuse?
Physical and sexual abuse
What’s the most commonly reported/most prevalent type of child maltreatment?
Neglect
What are some age characteristics linked with child maltreatment?
- Younger children are more likely to be neglected
- Older children (> 12 years) are more likely to be sexually abused
What are some gender characteristics linked with child maltreatment?
Girls are more likely to be sexually abused
What are some family characteristics linked with child maltreatment?
- Single-parent families have higher rates of physical abuse and neglect
- Having a single-parent is a risk factor
What are some SES characteristics linked with child maltreatment?
- Poverty = risk factor
- Lots of overlap with poverty
Describe the findings of Bullinger et al., (2022) study on upward social mobility and child maltreatment
- Upward social mobility: moving up the social ladder
- Study found that in countries where children had more chance of upward social mobility, there were lower rates of childhood maltreatment, independent from income inequality and poverty
- Upward Social Mobility = Protective -> lower risk for child maltreatment if child is more likely to move up social/income ladder later on
- Points to reducing income inequality as a means to reduce childhood maltreatment
- Maybe something that leads to childhood maltreatment is stress due to lack of resources
What were Park & Walsh (2022) findings on how COVID-19 impacted childhood maltreatment?
- Seems to be evidence for notable increases in childhood maltreatment during lockdowns
- Effect occurs across the globe
- Effect was stronger in low and middle income countries (LMIC)
- This is in line with poverty as a risk factor
- Countries with more poverty were more negatively impacted during the lockdown, in terms of childhood maltreatment
- COVID is a chronosystem influence (Bronfenbrenner model)
What’s the developmental course of maltreatment?
- Children experiencing maltreatment must learn to cope with challenges in environment -> learning how to update schemas on people and the world
- These adaptations may cause problems in other contexts
What does maltreatment shape/alter?
- Brain development: impacts brain structure (ex: smaller brain volume) and function
- Physiological reactivity to stress
- Understanding of emotion
How does maltreatment shape a child’s understanding of emotion?
- Being abused or neglected by a parent exposes a child to different emotional experiences
- May change their understanding and experience of emotions
- Ex: if constantly exposed to anger from a parent, and if recognizing that anger was adaptive, would that change the child’s perception of emotion? -> child may become always on the lookout for anger to protect self
- Early experience of maltreatment fundamentally changes how children perceive emotions
- Children who have been physically abused show a bias for identifying angry faces and need less info to identify angry faces
- Implications for their behavior and emotional response
Describe Pollak et al. (2000) study on Child Maltreatment & Understanding of Emotion with the emotion recognition task
- Participants: 17 physically abused children, 16 physically neglected children, 15 children with no abuse history
- Between 3 and 5 yrs old
- Emotion recognition task
- Children presented with 25 vignettes describing a protagonist experiencing 1 of 5 emotions: happiness, sadness, disgust, fear, anger
- Ex: Johnny’s/Susie’s little brother broke his/her favourite toy on purpose
- After each story, the child was shown 3 photos of emotions and one was correct (matched the emotion in vignette) and 2 were distractors
- Asked the kids to point to the face that matched the emotion in the vignette
What were Pollak et al. (2000) trying to identify with their study on Child Maltreatment & Understanding of Emotion with the emotion recognition task
1) Sensitivity to differences between facial expressions
* How accurate is the child?
* Number of times a child picks “angry” correctly
* Some of these will be lucky guesses -> subtract the number of times child says “angry” incorrectly
2) Bias towards labeling a particular stimulus as a particular emotion
* Extent to which a particular label may be more likely than others
Describe the findings for Pollak et al. (2000) study on Child Maltreatment & Understanding of Emotion with the emotion recognition task
1) Sensitivity to differences between facial expressions
* Found that neglected children were less sensitive to differences between facial expressions -> didn’t do as good of a job of differentiating than other children
* Maybe neglect is leading to some difficulties with identifying emotions
2) Bias towards labeling a particular stimulus as a particular emotion
* Extent to which a particular label may be more likely than others
* Physically abused children show a bias for angry faces (even if the story wasn’t related to anger)
* Neglected children show a bias for sad faces
What are 2 possible reasons for Pollak et al. (2000) findings for their study on Child Maltreatment & Understanding of Emotion with the emotion recognition task
1) Visually, children can’t discriminate between the faces
2) They have different understandings of the emotional displays
Describe Pollak et al. (2000) follow-up study on Child Maltreatment & Understanding of Emotion with the emotion discrimination task
Participants:
* 13 physically abused children
* 15 physically neglected children
* 11 children with no abuse history
* Between 3 and 5 yrs old
* Emotion discrimination task:
* Shown 2 photographs of models showing emotions and asked children if “same or different”
Describe the findings for Pollak et al. (2000) follow-up study on Child Maltreatment & Understanding of Emotion with the emotion discrimination task
- Found no differences between 3 groups on this task -> they were all able to identify different emotions in this task
- It’s not that physically abused and neglected children can’t visually see the differences in emotions (goes against hypothesis 1 from original study)
Describe Pollak et al. (2000) follow-up study on Child Maltreatment & Understanding of Emotion with the emotion differentiation task
- Children shown photographs of 2 models and asked to rate the similarity of the facial expressions (emotions)
- 6 shelves lined up horizontally
- One photograph of angry face placed on the far right
- Child indicated similarity by placing the other photo
Describe the findings for Pollak et al. (2000) follow-up study on Child Maltreatment & Understanding of Emotion with the emotion differentiation task
- Found that neglected children perceived less distinction between angry, sad, fearful facial expressions
- Found that physically abused children and control children perceived more distinction between anger and other negative emotions
- Conclusions: experience of maltreatment changes understanding of emotion (it’s not about recognition but about understanding how similar or distinct emotions are to each other)
- Role of experience in learning emotions (we learn emotion signals through interactions with others in early childhood)
Describe Pollak & Sinha (2002) study on Child Maltreatment & Understanding of Emotion
Participants
* 8-10 yrs old
* 24 physically abused children
* 23 non-maltreated children
* Presented children with photos displaying angry, sad, fearful, and happy facial images
* Showed children heavily pixelized images of emotions
* Images are slowly filled in randomly, so that the expression gradually appears
* Dependent variable is how early the child can identify the photo
* Measured how early children can correctly identify the emotion as they slowly depixelize it
* At 3.3 second intervals, more of photo filled in
* At each interval, children were prompted to identify the emotion
* Had to rate their confidence in their choice from 1 (Guess) to 5 (Certainty)
* Only correct responses with a rating of 4 or 5 were used -> didn’t count guess responses (ex: 1 ratings)
Describe Pollak & Sinha (2002) findings for their study on Child Maltreatment & Understanding of Emotion
- Found no significant difference in how quickly/accurately all children identified happy and fearful faces
- Found a difference in identification of angry faces
- Children who have experienced physical abuse are more likely to recognize angry faces earlier than other children (differences start at image 7) and needed less info to accurately identify angry faces than control children
- Children who experienced physical abuse were slower than control children to identifying sad faces and needed more info than control children to identify sad faces
How do Diathesis-Stress Models explain the connection between child maltreatment and psychopathology?
- Genetic predispositions interacting with maltreatment to lead to later psychopathology
- If you have a greater diathesis/greater vulnerability, it increases your likelihood for later psychopathology
Describe Caspi et al. (2002) findings for their diathesis-stress model study of conduct disorder
- Found that in children with conduct disorder, MAOA activity interacts with maltreatment
- Low MAOA activity and maltreatment predicts antisocial behavior in adulthood
Describe Caspi et al. (2003) findings for their diathesis-stress model study of depression
- Looked at depression and the serotonin transporter gene 5-HTTLPR
- 2 versions of this transporter gene: short allele and a long allele
- In adults, short allele is associated with increased depression, but only for those who experience significant life stress
- Diathesis = short allele
- Stress = life stress
- Life stress moderates the relationship between this gene and depression
- Looked at the probability of a major depression episode in participants with 2 copies of long alleles, with 1 short and 1 long allele, and with 2 copies of short alleles, who had experienced no maltreatment, probable maltreatment and severe maltreatment
- At no levels of maltreatment, it doesn’t matter what gene you have (no differences)
- At probable maltreatment, we start to see differences in genes
- At severe maltreatment, we see significant differences in genes (probability highest for s/s, then s/l, and lowest for l/l)
Describe the findings of a second study that replicated the Caspi et al. (2003) findings for their diathesis-stress model study of depression
- Found that social support played a protective role
- The moderator was itself moderated by something else -> the relationship was further moderated based on levels of social support
- Maltreated children with a short allele and poor social support had rates of depression 2x higher than maltreated children with a short allele and social support
Describe Bleys et al. (2018) meta-analysis of studies on the interaction between life stress and the serotonin transporter gene
- Saw that a number of studies didn’t find the interaction between life stress and the serotonin transporter gene
- So conducted a meta-analysis of 51 studies, with total of 51,449 participants
- Found evidence for small but significant interaction between 5-HTTPLR serotonin transporter gene moderating relation between life stress and depression
- Research still ongoing
Is child maltreatment characterized by multifinality or equifinality?
- Multifinality
- Maltreatment is a risk factor for the development of many forms of psychopathology
- Ex: depression, antisocial behavior, PTSD
- Different diatheses can lead to different outcomes -> diatheses may shape the type of psychopathology that youth who experience maltreatment develop
- Not all childhood maltreatment leads to PTSD
What characterizes exposure to a PTSD Criterion A stressor?
- Actual or threatened death, serious injury, sexual violation
- Direct experience
- Witness it in person
- Learns that it happened to a close family member or friend (must have been violent)
- Experiences repeated exposure to details of event (vicarious trauma)
- Doesn’t apply to exposure through electronic media, tv, movies, or pictures, unless this exposure is work related
- Ex: first responders, jury members
What do you need to be diagnosed with PTSD?
- Need exposure to a Criterion A stressor/trauma
- In one or more methods of exposure
Recent scholarship has been expanding the definition of Criterion A Trauma to include what?
- Exposure to racial discrimination
- Recent scholarship acknowledging consistent experienced and vicarious exposure to racism as experiences of trauma
- Recent review of meta-analyses shows discrimination has stronger impact on youth mental health outcomes than traumatic experiences/maltreatment such as neglect
What are the 4 core features of PTSD?
- Intrusion (1 symptom required)
- Avoidance (1 symptom required)
- Extreme arousal (2 symptoms required)
- Negative cognitions and mood (2 symptoms required)
- Symptoms must persist for at least one month
What are the symptoms related to the intrusion core feature of PTSD?
- Recurrent, involuntary, memories (may see this in children as play episodes)
- Flashbacks
- Nightmares
- Intense physical distress to reminders of the events
- Marked physiological reactivity to stressor
What are the symptoms related to the avoidance core feature of PTSD?
- Avoiding thoughts or feelings related to the trauma
- Avoiding stimuli related to the trauma (ex: place related to trauma)
What are the symptoms related to the extreme (physiological) arousal core feature of PTSD?
- Sleep disturbance: difficulty falling or staying asleep
- Irritable/aggressive behavior (can be manifested as tantrums for children)
- Hypervigiliance
- Easily startled
- Difficulty concentrating
- Self-destructive behavior (not present in children below 6)
What are the symptoms related to the negative cognitions and mood core feature of PTSD?
- Inability to recall key features of the event
- Persistent negative beliefs about self or world
- Distorted blame of self or others
- Persistent negative trauma related emotions (ex: horror, shame)
- Diminished in activities
- Alienation from others
- Inability to experience positive emotions
What are some other PTSD symptoms that we don’t see within the 4 core features?
- Derealization: phenomenon where everything takes a dream-like quality
- Depersonalization: feeling of being outside of own body
Ex: people report floating above themselves and watching themselves experience this trauma
Describe PTSD in Children 6 Years of Age & Younger
- Presence of one or more symptoms of intrusion
- One or more symptoms of avoidance and/or negative cognitions -> combined the negative cognitions/mood and avoidance
- 2 or more symptoms of extreme arousal
- Symptoms may be expressed through play (reenactment)
- More behaviourally anchored symptoms:
- “Feelings of detachment or estrangement from others” = social withdrawal
- “Persistent inability to experience positive emotions” = persistent reduction in expression of positive emotions -> not as engaged and active as you would expect a young kid to be
- Irritability expanded to include tantrums
What’s the prevalence of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder?
- Limited data with children
- With adolescents:
- National Comorbidity Survey of Adolescents -> lifetime prevalence of PTSD is 5%
- Other work has suggested that the majority of youth who experience trauma experience some symptoms of PTSD -> exposure to criterion A stressors is generally associated to some symptoms of PTSD
- 85% of youth who experienced a significant trauma reported at least one symptom of PTSD
Trauma- and stressor-related disorders was a new category in which edition of the DSM?
Trauma- and stressor-related disorders is a new category in DSM-5
What disorders does the trauma- and stressor-related disorders category in the DSM-5 include?
- Acute Stress Disorder
- Adjustment Disorder
- Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)
- Reactive Attachment Disorder
- Disinhibited Social Engagement Disorder
Describe Acute Stress Disorder
- The development during or within 1 month after exposure to an extreme traumatic stressor of at least 9 symptoms associated with intrusion, negative mood, dissociation, avoidance, and arousal
- Meeting criteria for PTSD but it hasn’t been a month yet
- Immediate/short-term symptoms of PTSD in response to trauma exposure but hasn’t been long enough for diagnosis of PTSD
- If symptoms persist overtime, the diagnosis may change into PTSD