There have been long-standing differences of opinion regarding the influence of the face relative to that of contextual information on how individuals process and judge facial expressions of emotion. However, developmental changes in how individuals use such information have remained largely unexplored and could be informative in attempting to reconcile these opposing views. The current study tested for age-related differences in how individuals prioritize viewing emotional faces versus contexts when making emotion judgments. To do so, we asked 4-, 8-, and 12-year-old children as well as college students to categorize facial expressions of emotion that were presented with scenes that were either congruent or incongruent with the facial displays. During this time, we recorded participants’ gaze patterns via eye tracking. College students directed their visual attention primarily to the face, regardless of contextual information. Children, however, divided their attention between both the face and the context as sources of emotional information depending on the valence of the context. These findings reveal a developmental shift in how individuals process and integrate emotional cues.

Rumination involves the tendency to passively dwell on negative emotions along with their meanings and consequences. Susan Nolen–Hoeksema demonstrated the role of rumination in the development of several forms of psychopathology and suggested that cognitive control may be one factor that makes some individuals more prone to ruminate than others. Studies with adults have consistently found that rumination is associated with cognitive control difficulties, especially related to switching and inhibiting emotional information. Because rumination predicts psychopathology by adolescence, the present study examined whether ruminating youth would show similar cognitive control difficulties. Fifty–two adolescents completed two tasks from the Cambridge Neuropsychological Test Automated Battery and reported on their depressive symptoms and tendency to ruminate. There was no effect of rumination on a task measuring general cognitive flexibility. However, rumination was associated with difficulty inhibiting negative information when switching from negative to positive blocks on an Affective Go/No–go task. Results suggest both similarities and differences compared to adult studies and are discussed in terms of clinical implications for the prevention and treatment of psychopathology.

Objective Although there is much evidence of hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis dysfunction among individuals who have experienced child maltreatment, dysregulation of the autonomic nervous system (ANS) has received less attention. Understanding the role of the ANS in maltreated children may help clarify how these children respond to subsequent life stress. Method We explored ANS reactivity among 111 youth (ages 9 to 14), 34 of whom had experienced verified child maltreatment. ANS activity was assessed via blood pressure-- a convenient, non-invasive physiological index-- while youth underwent a social stress task. Blood pressure and subjective mood ratings were obtained prior to and following the task. Results Non-maltreated youth experienced an increase in systolic blood pressure following the stressor while maltreated youth did not. Self-reported subjective mood worsened for both groups. Conclusions The current data suggest that children who experienced early stress exposure demonstrate blunted ANS reactivity. Results are discussed in terms of children’s healthy adaptations to transient social stressors. In addition, we discuss the cost-effectiveness and benefits of physiological measures such as blood pressure for understanding risk for psychopathology.

The family environment has strong impacts on children's emotional development.Although children can adapt to a high degree of variation in the type of input they receive, child maltreatment is a species-atypical experience that disrupts the biological systems that underlie children's social and emotional development. In this chapter we describe the consequences of maltreatment on children's emotional development, focusing on alterations in 1) emotion perception, recognition, and attention, 2) emotion expression, 3) regulation of negative emotions and stress, and 4) reward processing. We consider several target mechanisms through which child maltreatment impacts these aspects of emotion processing, including behavioral, physiological, cognitive, and neurobiological, pathways. We also discuss clinical implications of this body of research, including the potential for designing effective interventions aimed at targeting specific emotional biases associated with the experience of maltreatment. 3 Maltreatment and Emotional DevelopmentChild maltreatment is a widespread problem throughout the world. The Center for Disease Control (CDC) defines child maltreatment as "any act or series of acts of commission or omission by a parent or other caregiver that results in harm, potential for harm, or threat of harm to a child" (Leeb, Paulozzi, Melanson, Simon, & Arias, 2008). Researchers who study the impact and outcomes of child maltreatment typically discuss child maltreatment in terms of acts of commission and acts of omission (Pollak et al., 2000). Acts of commission include physical, sexual, and psychological or emotional abuse, while acts of omission include failures to provide for and supervise children (e.g., neglect and exposure to violent environments).Sub-types of maltreatment have similarly been categorized in terms of the presence of harmful input (abuse/trauma) or inadequate input (neglect/deprivation; Humphreys & Zeanah, 2017). Subtypes of maltreatment are difficult to examine separately because children who are maltreated frequently experience more than one type of abuse (Vachon, Krueger, Rogosch, & Cicchetti, 2015). Though there is some preliminary evidence that these subtypes of maltreatment may be associated with different emotional problems, current scientific understanding of these differential pathways is limited. Consequently, in this chapter we discuss maltreatment as a broad construct composed of these subtypes (acts of commission/harmful input and acts of omission/inadequate input) and we review research that focuses on one or more of these different components of maltreatment.Childhood maltreatment is associated with a number of problems related to emotional development, defined as the development of emotion perception, communication, interpretation, and regulation of emotion (Halberstadt, Denham, & Dunsmore, 2001). Abnormal development of these processes can lead to behavioral problems and psychopathology, such as post-traumatic

Rumination, a cognitive process that involves passively, repetitively focusing on negative feelings and their meaning, is a transdiagnostic risk factor for psychopathology. Research with adults has suggested that attentional control difficulties may underlie rumination, but questions remain about the nature of these processes. Furthermore, the relationship between attentional control and rumination in youth has received little empirical examination. In the present study, 92 youth (ages 9–14; 72% girls; 74% Caucasian) reported on their trait rumination and internalizing symptoms. They also completed a 1,500 ms emotional-faces dot-probe task while their eye movements were measured to examine overt visual attention with high temporal precision. Youth’s rumination was associated with greater dwell on emotional faces but not with initial orientation. These findings suggest that rumination is associated with increased attention to emotional information during the later stages of selective attention rather than earlier orienting to emotional cues. Implications for prevention and treatment of psychopathology are discussed.