Maltreated children are at substantial risk for the development of mental health problems, yet we know little about the neural mechanisms that contribute to this vulnerability. The research proposed in this application is designed to illuminate how traumatic experiences impact perceptual and attentional processes implicated in emotional development. Specifically, we aim to uncover the types of affective information that impact most upon emotional learning and investigate how such learning takes place. We hypothesize that vocal expressions of anger will have a differential impact on maltreated and control children. Additionally, abused children should attend more to both vocal and facial expressions of anger and show poor attentional control when presented with distracting anger signals. We also hypothesize that physiological arousal may be related to the degree to which abused children attend to anger. Biased processing of multiple emotion signals may lead to difficulty responding adaptively to emotional signals in normative contexts. This research will enhance our understanding of how dysregulation of attention may contribute to risk for maladaptive social and behavioral outcomes and inform the development of effective treatment programs for at-risk children.
| Shackman, Jessica E; Pollak, Seth D (2014) Impact of physical maltreatment on the regulation of negative affect and aggression. Dev Psychopathol 26:1021-33 |
| Shackman, Jessica E; Fatani, Serah; Camras, Linda A et al. (2010) Emotion expression among abusive mothers is associated with their children's emotion processing and problem behaviours. Cogn Emot 24:1421-1430 |
| Shackman, Jessica E; Shackman, Alexander J; Pollak, Seth D (2007) Physical abuse amplifies attention to threat and increases anxiety in children. Emotion 7:838-52 |
