The association between psychopathology, childhood trauma, and emotion processing.

Abstract

Objective: Childhood trauma is highly prevalent and can have a negative impact on the development of socioemotional processes resulting in a higher vulnerability for mental disorders in adulthood. Previous studies have associated the severity of childhood trauma with deficits in social functioning, such as a negative attention bias, suggesting altered social information processing as a mechanism underlying the association between childhood trauma and transdiagnostic psychopathologies. Method: In a cross-sectional setup with a total of 103 participants (26 with major depressive disorder, MDD; 24 with posttraumatic stress disorder, PTSD; 22 with somatic symptom disorder, SDD; and 31 healthy volunteers, HV), this study applied eye tracking in an emotion recognition paradigm. Reaction times, accuracy, and gaze behavior were analyzed for 4 different facial expressions as a function of self-reported childhood trauma and diagnosis. The aim was to investigate to what extent emotion processing is associated with (a) childhood trauma, (b) psychopathology, and (c) respective interacting effects. Results: Patients showed higher reaction times and error rates overall in classifying emotions than HVs, especially for the recognition of anger and fear. Individuals with a diagnosis of PTSD and MDD were particularly slow in their response to these emotions. Higher scores of reported childhood trauma were associated with faster responses for classifying anger and fear and slower initiation of eye movements for SSD, MDD, and HVs for anger. Conclusion: These findings indicate that childhood trauma may contribute to attentional and information-processing biases relevant for social interaction. Identifying individual social deficits offers implications for tailored therapeutic interventions. Clinical Impact StatementPatients with mental disorders often experience different forms of social problems that affect interactions with others and personal well-being. Our study shows that recognizing emotions of anger and fear seem to be difficult to classify and respond to for patients with a history of childhood trauma. Identifying social abilities that are impaired across patients and considering aversive childhood experiences may help to adapt therapeutic approaches while at the same time focusing on ameliorating individual deficits.

Association between childhood maltreatment and social functioning in individuals with affective disorders: A systematic review and meta‐analysis

“…The overall quality of included studies was fair. The quality rating (possible range 0-8) of the included studies was M = 5.35 (SD = 1.09; range = 3-7), with one (3.4%) study 118 receiving a rating considered as low (<4), and five 20,41,44,108,119 (17.4%) of the studies receiving a rating considered as high (>6). The quality rating of the studies exploring associations between CM and social functioning domains was M = 5.45 (SD = 1.15; range = 3-7), and of those exploring associations between CM and social cognition domains was M = 5.0 (SD = 0.95; range = 4-7).…”

Associations between childhood adversity, psychiatric symptoms, and self‐esteem outcomes in adolescents and young adults: An experience sampling study

“…This seems to suggest that the self‐esteem of people with many childhood adverse experiences remains low and is less contingent on factors such as psychiatric symptoms. One possible explanation is that they have stronger negative attention and information processing biases and as such might view an increase in psychiatric symptoms as fitting their negative expectations of themselves and their future (Flechsenhar et al, 2022; Hepp et al, 2021). Another interpretation is that a floor effect is present: when self‐esteem is already lower due to higher childhood adversity, it is more difficult for it to further decrease with increasing psychiatric symptoms.…”

Oxytocin effects on amygdala reactivity to angry faces in males and females with antisocial personality disorder

“…We used the same emotion classification task as in prior studies [29,33,44,45]. As previously described, the emotion classification task [37] followed a 3 × 2 design (facial emotions at full intensity: fearful, angry, happy; regions for initial eye gaze fixation: eyes, mouth; for details, see [33]).…”