Recognition and posing of emotional expressions by abused children and their mothers.

Abstract

Twenty abused and 20 nonabused pairs of children (3 to 7 years of age) and their mothers participated in a facial expression posing task and a facial expression recognition task. The expressions produced by subjects were judged on emotion content by naive raters and were coded using Friesen and Ekman's (1984) Emotion Facial Action Coding System (EMFACS). Data analysis indicated that abused children and their mothers pose less recognizable expressions than nonabused children and mothers. Although abused children were less accurate than nonabused children in recognizing emotional expressions, there was no difference in recognition accuracy between the two groups of mothers. A significant correlation between mothers' posing scores and children's recognition scores was also obtained. These results suggest that abused children may not observe easily interpreted voluntary displays of emotion by their mothers as often as nonabused children. This may partially explain the difference in recognition (and production) abilities of abused and nonabused children.

Experiential Influences on Multimodal Perception of Emotion

“…Consistent with prior reports (e.g., Camras et al, 1988), the present study suggests potentially important differences in the communication of emotion by physically abusive and nonmaltreating mothers. Physically abused children demonstrated an enhanced perceptual preference for expressions of anger, leading one to expect that maltreating mothers would be better at anger production.…”

Emotion regulation and understanding: implications for child psychopathology and therapy

“…Maltreated children demonstrate deficits in their ability to pose emotion expressions, as do their mothers in some studies (Camras et al, 1988;During & McMahon, 1991). Maltreated children also are more inhibited in their emotion expression (i.e., less expression) during conflict situations compared to nonmaltreated peers (Camras & Rappaport, 1993).…”

“…Extant work indicates that some deficits exist in the emotion understanding of children at-risk for psychological disorder. For example, abused and maltreated children exhibit deficits in the recognition of face expressions of emotion (e.g., Camras, Grow, & Ribordy, 1983;Camras & Rappaport, 1993;Camras et al, 1990;Camras et al, 1988). Maltreated children, children at risk for disruptive behavior disorders, and ''hardto-manage'' preschoolers demonstrated poorly developed understandings of the causes of emotion, for example, by providing fewer appropriate examples of triggers or cues for emotion (e.g., Camras, Sachs-Alter, & Ribordy, 1996;Cook, Greenberg, & Kusche, 1994;Greenberg et al, 1995;Rogosch, Cicchetti, & Aber, 1995;Shipman & Zeman, 1999).…”

Empathy and risk status for child physical abuse: the effects of an adult victim's pain cues and an adult victim's intent on aggression

“…Several studies [Disbrow et al, 1977;Frodi and Lamb, 1980;Kropp and Haynes, 1987;Pruitt, 1983] have shown that abusive and high-risk parents exhibit less ability to discriminate among emotions than comparison groups. However, other studies [Balge and Milner, 2000;Camras et al, 1988;During and McMahon, 1991] failed to find differences among groups. The mixed findings may be due to the fact that emotion recognition differences between abusive and nonabusive mothers are modest [Camras et al, 1988] and/or are moderated by the type of stimuli used [Balge and Milner, 2000;Camras et al, 1988].…”

“…However, other studies [Balge and Milner, 2000;Camras et al, 1988;During and McMahon, 1991] failed to find differences among groups. The mixed findings may be due to the fact that emotion recognition differences between abusive and nonabusive mothers are modest [Camras et al, 1988] and/or are moderated by the type of stimuli used [Balge and Milner, 2000;Camras et al, 1988].…”