Childhood abuse history and attention bias in adults

Abstract

Attention biases toward unpleasant information are evident among children and adults with a history of abuse and have been identified as a potential pathway through which abused children develop psychopathology. Identifying whether a history of childhood abuse affects the time course of attention biases in adults is critical, as this may provide intervention targets. The present study examined the time course of attention bias during an emotion‐word Stroop task using event‐related potentials (ERPs) in a sample of adults with a range of child abuse histories using a categorical approach (comparing adults with or without a history of moderate‐to‐severe childhood abuse) and a dimensional approach (analyzing the range from no abuse to severe abuse in a continuous manner). Although behavioral performance did not vary as a function of abuse history, adults with a history of moderate‐to‐severe childhood abuse showed ERP evidence of early reduced processing of emotional stimuli (smaller N200) and later reduced processing of emotional and nonemotional stimuli (smaller P300), followed by later increased processing of unpleasant stimuli (larger slow wave [SW]). Results suggest that early disengagement from emotional stimuli may help individuals with moderate‐to‐severe abuse histories to achieve normal behavioral performance on the emotion‐word Stroop task. Additionally, regardless of analytic approach, adults with elevated levels of childhood abuse exhibited prolonged engagement (larger SW) specifically with unpleasant stimuli. Present results demonstrate attention bias patterns in adults with a history of childhood abuse and clarify the time course of attention bias. Results are discussed in the context of potential treatment implications.

Association of Neural Connectome With Early Experiences of Abuse in Adults

“…The convergent evidence that childhood abuse is associated with alterations in networks related to attention, cognitive control, and somatomotor systems may reflect heightened awareness of one’s environment due to being exposed to high levels of threat at an early age . This interpretation is supported by the evidence of early abuse being associated with greater connectivity of amygdala-related networks, as well as vigilance to potential threats as measured by emotional Stroop and facial encoding paradigms. Although hypervigilance to threat is typically considered indicative of anxiety disorders, this pattern may suggest that adults who have experienced childhood abuse may also have a preferential sensitivity to environmental cues.…”

Social threat and safety learning in individuals with adverse childhood experiences: electrocortical evidence on face processing, recognition, and working memory

“…For instance, biased attention and memory for negatively arousing information are associated with cognitive impairments such as distractibility or concentration problems (e.g. negativity bias; Letkiewicz et al, 2020 ).…”

“…N2, P200, P300; Karl et al, 2006 ). For instance, individuals with a history of abuse show reduced N2 and P300 for emotional stimuli, which presumably reflect problems in disengagement from emotional information (Letkiewicz et al, 2020 ). Importantly, combined attentional and learning deficits could serve as a link between adverse childhood experiences and severity of psychopathology.…”

Investigation of reward learning and feedback sensitivity in non-clinical participants with a history of early life stress

“…Women with a history of childhood sexual abuse and a diagnosis of Major Depressive disorder (MDD) showed decreased performance on trials requiring learning of previously rewarded information compared to MDD only and control groups [35]. While there is relatively little literature regarding reward learning in ELS there is much more known about the effects of ELS upon cognitive flexibility and other aspects of reward processing [23,36,37]. Neuroimaging studies have shown that participants with ELS show reduced striatal reward anticipation [38] while results from other behavioural tasks have shown that ELS is associated with reduced reward responsiveness [39] and differences in exploitation strategy [37,40].…”

“…While there is relatively little literature regarding reward learning in ELS there is much more known about the effects of ELS upon cognitive flexibility and other aspects of reward processing [23,36,37]. Neuroimaging studies have shown that participants with ELS show reduced striatal reward anticipation [38] while results from other behavioural tasks have shown that ELS is associated with reduced reward responsiveness [39] and differences in exploitation strategy [37,40]. Finally, of relevance to the PRLT, studies have observed reduced cognitive flexibility in children that have suffered ELS [36,41] although in tasks other than the PRLT.…”