Week 7: Child Maltreatment and Emotion Recognition Flashcards
Developmental Course of
Maltreatment
Children experiencing maltreatment must learn to cope with challenges in environment
These adaptations may cause problems in other contexts
Maltreatment shapes:
- Brain development
- Physiological reactivity to stress
- Understanding of emotion
Maltreatment and Understanding of Emotion
Being abused or neglected by a parent exposes you to different emotional experiences
May change your understanding and experience of emotions
E.g., If you are constantly exposed to anger from a parent, and if recognizing that anger was adaptive, would that change your perception of emotion?
If anger is a sign you might get hurt, recognizing it ASAP is extremely important and therefore you will likely become very good at it
Child Maltreatment and Understanding of Emotion Experiment
Participants
- 17 physically abused children
- 16 physically neglected children
- 15 children with no abuse history
- Between 3 and 5 years of age
Emotion recognition task
Children presented with 25 vignettes describing a protagonist experiencing one of 5 emotions:
happiness, sadness, disgust, fear, anger
E.g.
-Johnny’s/Susie’s little brother broke his/her favourite toy on purpose.
-At Christmas, Johnny/Susie got a new toy house that he/she wanted.
-After each story, child shown three photographs of facial expressions
(correct one and two distractors) and asked to point to the face appropriate for the stories protagonist
This is the DV
Child Maltreatment and Understanding of Emotion
What are we interested in
(1) Sensitivity to differences between facial expressions
- How accurate is the child?
- Number of times a child picks “angry” correctly
- Remember that some of these will be lucky guesses
- So subtract the number of times child says “angry” incorrectly
- In general, neglected children were less sensitive to differences between facial expressions
(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
- Neglected children show a bias for sad faces (maybe they have less information about emotions in general)
What could be the reasons for these findings?
Two reasons for those findings:
(1) Visually, children cannot discriminate between the faces (an issue with perception)
(2) They have different understanding of the emotional displays
Child Maltreatment and Understanding of Emotion
Further study (is it perception or not?)
Participants
- 13 physically abused children
- 15 physically neglected children
- 11 children with no abuse history
- Between 3 and 5 years of age
Emotion discrimination task
-Shown two photographs of models showing emotions and asked “same or different”
-No differences between three groups on this task
-It is not that physically abused and neglected children cannot see the
differences
Child Maltreatment and Understanding of Emotion
Further study (is it differences in emotional perception?)
Emotion differentiation task
Children shown photographs of two models and asked to rate the
similarity of the facial expressions
Six shelfs lined up horizontally
One photograph placed on the far right
Child indicated similarity by placing the other photo - closer = similar
Neglected children perceived less distinction between angry, sad, fearful facial expressions
Physically abused children and control children perceived more distinction between anger and other negative emotions
Conclusions
Experience of maltreatment changes understanding of emotion
Role of experience in learning emotions
Child Maltreatment and Recognition of Emotion
Image filling in task
(study design)
Participants
8 to 10 years of age
24 physically abused children
23 non maltreated children
Presented children with photos displaying angry, sad, fearful, and happy
facial images
Images are slowly filled in randomly, so that the expression gradually
appears
Dependent variable is how early the child can identify the photo
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
Child Maltreatment and Recognition of Emotion
Image filling in task
Results
Found that children who had experienced physical abuse needed less information to accurately identify angry faces than control
children
Note that when these children made mistakes they were not more likely
to say “anger”
Physically abused children needed more information than control children to identify sad faces
No difference for fearful and happy faces
Child Maltreatment and
Understanding of Emotion
Conclusion
Early experience of maltreatment fundamentally changes how children perceive emotions
Children who have been physically abused show a bias for identifying angry faces, and they need less information to identify angry faces. This is adaptive in the abuse environment but not in the wider world (e.g. hostile attribution bias)
Implications for their behavior and emotional response
Summary of this episode
Early experience of maltreatment has profound effects on development
Changes children’s understanding and recognition of emotion
Children who have been physically abused show a bias for identifying angry faces, and they need less information to
identify angry faces
Neglected children perceive less distinction between angry, sad, fearful facial expressions
Implications for their behavior and emotional response
