The Relationship Between Childhood Emotional Abuse and Processing of Emotional Facial Expressions in Healthy Young Men: Event-Related Potential and Behavioral Evidence.

Yutong Liu,Jianhui Wu,Huini Peng,Hongxia Duan

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2021.686529

Abstract

Background: Individuals exposed to childhood maltreatment present with a deficiency in emotional processing in later life. Most studies have focused mainly on childhood physical or sexual abuse; however, childhood emotional abuse, a core issue underlying different forms of childhood maltreatment, has received relatively little attention. The current study explored whether childhood emotional abuse is related to the impaired processing of emotional facial expressions in healthy young men.Methods: The emotional facial processing was investigated in a classical gender discrimination task while the event-related potentials (ERPs) data were collected. Childhood emotional abuse was assessed by a Childhood Trauma Questionnaire (CTQ) among 60 healthy young men. The relationship between the score of emotional abuse and the behavioral and the ERP index of emotional facial expression (angry, disgust, and happy) were explored.Results: Participants with a higher score of childhood emotional abuse responded faster on the behavioral level and had a smaller P2 amplitude on the neural level when processing disgust faces compared to neutral faces.Discussion: Individuals with a higher level of childhood emotional abuse may quickly identify negative faces with less cognitive resources consumed, suggesting altered processing of emotional facial expressions in young men with a higher level of childhood emotional abuse.

Highlights

Childhood emotional abuse is broadly defined as the long-time intentional or unintentional inappropriate emotional response and accompanying expressive behavior by caregivers toward a child (Dottan and Karu, 2006; Norman et al, 2012)
Childhood Emotional Abuse known compared to research on physical abuse and sexual abuse, which is partly because emotional abuse has not been considered as a distinct form of childhood maltreatment until the last few decades (Glaser, 2002; Wright, 2007; Egeland, 2009)
We further investigated whether this hypersensitivity is to specific negative facial expressions or all emotional facial expressions

Summary

Introduction

Childhood emotional abuse is broadly defined as the long-time intentional or unintentional inappropriate emotional response and accompanying expressive behavior by caregivers (e.g., verbal abuse, taunting, belittling, and rejection) toward a child (Dottan and Karu, 2006; Norman et al, 2012). The long-term impact of childhood emotional abuse is far less. It has been shown that emotional abuse is a widespread phenomenon and the core factor underlying different forms of childhood maltreatment (Hart et al, 1997; Iwaniec et al, 2006; Yates, 2007). By examining the impact of different forms of abuse, studies have found that childhood emotional abuse is more strongly related to depression than physical or sexual abuse (Martins et al, 2014; Nelson et al, 2017). Individuals exposed to childhood maltreatment present with a deficiency in emotional processing in later life. Most studies have focused mainly on childhood physical or sexual abuse; childhood emotional abuse, a core issue underlying different forms of childhood maltreatment, has received relatively little attention. The current study explored whether childhood emotional abuse is related to the impaired processing of emotional facial expressions in healthy young men

Objectives

Results

Discussion

Conclusion