Abstract
Childhood exposure to traumatic violence may shape how children respond to threatening faces and increase risk for psychopathology. Maltreated children may exhibit altered processing of threatening faces; however, the effects of witnessing intimate partner violence (IPV) on children’s discrimination of facial expressions is under-studied. Emotional face processing differentially relates to psychopathology, with some evidence suggesting improved detection of angry faces in children with fear-related anxiety symptoms, whereas externalizing symptoms are associated with poorer detection of fearful faces and perhaps emotional faces broadly. In this cross-sectional study, we examined discrimination of threatening emotional faces (angry, fearful) in relation to experiences of probable abuse and witnessing of physical IPV, as well as psychopathology. Children (N = 137, mean age = 5.01 years, SD = 0.81) completed a “face in the crowd task” designed to examine discrimination of angry and fearful faces. Children either searched for an angry face among fearful distractor faces or a fearful face among angry distractors. Probable child abuse, witnessed IPV, and symptoms were assessed in semi-structured maternal interviews. Children who witnessed violence showed poorer accuracy when fearful faces were the target; however, effects for probable abuse were non-significant. Greater fear-related anxiety symptoms were associated with poorer accuracy for fearful faces. Externalizing symptoms were associated with poorer overall accuracy. Findings suggest that IPV and fear-related anxiety symptoms were associated with difficulty detecting fearful faces when angry distractors were present, consistent with prior research. Implications of violence- and symptom-associated deficits in emotional face processing are discussed.
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This study was funded by the National Institute of Mental Health R01MH082830 and U01MH090301.
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Goldstein, B.L., Grasso, D.J., McCarthy, K.J. et al. Intimate Partner Violence Exposure and Childhood Psychopathology: Associations with Discriminating Fearful and Angry Faces in Young Children. J Fam Viol 36, 967–978 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10896-020-00242-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10896-020-00242-5