Detailed contribution information
| Contribution title | 2753 - Emotional face matching task in children of mothers with interpersonal violence-related posttraumatic stress disorder |
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| Contribution code | PS03-63 (P) |
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| Form of presentation | Poster |
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| Abstract |
As part of the Geneva Early Childhood Stress Project, the present longitudinal study considers mothers exposed to interpersonal violence-related posttraumatic stress disorder (IPV-PTSD), non-PTSD controls, and the mothers’ children. During Phase 1 of the study, when children were ages 12-42 months, disturbances in emotion and arousal regulation, and differences in physiology (i.e. cortisol levels) and neural activation were found between mothers with IPV-PTSD and controls. In Phase 2 of this study, children are ages 5-9 years and are asked to perform an Emotional Face Matching Task (EFMT). Their mothers complete the same task. Based on results obtained during Phase 1 and on existing literature, we expect to find in Phase 2 1) slower reaction time across facial expressions among children of PTSD- compared to non-PTSD mothers due to difficulty in emotion appraisal; 2) associations between overreading of angry faces and maternal history of violence exposure and 3) positive correlations between maternal psychopathology and history, and child emotional processing errors and reaction times during Phase 2. We conducted two-tailed Pearson correlations between maternal variables and child EFMT data. Results demonstrated: 1) a significant relationship between maternal re-experience PCLS dimension and decreased RT in identifying fear in children (p=.049); 2) a significant relationship between overreading anger in children and maternal witnessing DV as a child (p=.020) and a significant correlation between maternal violence (reported in CTS) and decreased RT in identifying angry faces in children (p=.023). A multiple linear regression analysis using maternal witnessing DV and EFMT data as independent variables, and child EFMT results as dependent variable showed that mothers witnessing DV as a child who had longer RT in identifying fearful faces predicted better accuracy their child’s identification of angry (p=.008) and fearful faces (p=.024). We also found that maternal witnessing DV and RT in identifying anger were predictors of child correct identification of anger (p=.033). While the sample-size is yet too small to show conclusive group-differences, several associations and predictions have been observed, which seem to support our a-priori hypotheses that IPV and related maternal PTSD likely influence child emotion-appraisal. |