Cargando…

Early maltreatment effects on adolescent attention control to non‐emotional and emotional distractors

OBJECTIVE: Early maltreatment increases lifetime risk of psychopathology. Emerging models suggest that exposure to maltreatment leads to changes in cognitive processes associated with the processing of threat, including processes of selective attention. Existing data may be interpreted to suggest th...

Descripción completa

Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Gray, Paul, Baker, Helen M., Scerif, Gaia, Lau, Jennifer Y.F.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: John Wiley & Sons Australia, Ltd 2016
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5123582/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27942048
http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/ajpy.12139
_version_ 1782469763657629696
author Gray, Paul
Baker, Helen M.
Scerif, Gaia
Lau, Jennifer Y.F.
author_facet Gray, Paul
Baker, Helen M.
Scerif, Gaia
Lau, Jennifer Y.F.
author_sort Gray, Paul
collection PubMed
description OBJECTIVE: Early maltreatment increases lifetime risk of psychopathology. Emerging models suggest that exposure to maltreatment leads to changes in cognitive processes associated with the processing of threat, including processes of selective attention. Existing data may be interpreted to suggest that maltreatment is associated with an automatic attentional engagement with threatening cues, or that maltreatment is associated with generally poorer attention control. Using a pair of attention tasks, this study sought to examine whether maltreatment was associated with threat‐related interference on attention processing and if this could be explained by poorer attentional control capacity. METHOD: Fifty‐one maltreated adolescents from an out‐of‐home care sample in New South Wales, Australia were recruited to complete two attention tasks. Data from 24 of these participants were compared with that of a sample of non‐maltreated peers matched on gender, age, cognitive ability, and household income to identify maltreatment‐associated group differences. Data from all participants were then used to explore the degree to which attention variables correlated with continuous measures of internalising symptoms, subtypes, and severity of maltreatment. RESULTS: On the first task, maltreated adolescents showed significant interference from an irrelevant but non‐emotional distractor on reaction times when completing a central letter identification task under low perceptual task conditions. On the second task, maltreated adolescents also showed similar interference on a probe‐identification task that involved ignoring threatening (angry face) distractors, again under low perceptual load. CONCLUSIONS: These data may suggest difficulties exercising attention control following early maltreatment. These may contribute to the emergence of psychiatric disorders and other difficulties for those exposed to maltreatment.
format Online
Article
Text
id pubmed-5123582
institution National Center for Biotechnology Information
language English
publishDate 2016
publisher John Wiley & Sons Australia, Ltd
record_format MEDLINE/PubMed
spelling pubmed-51235822016-12-08 Early maltreatment effects on adolescent attention control to non‐emotional and emotional distractors Gray, Paul Baker, Helen M. Scerif, Gaia Lau, Jennifer Y.F. Aust J Psychol Special Issue OBJECTIVE: Early maltreatment increases lifetime risk of psychopathology. Emerging models suggest that exposure to maltreatment leads to changes in cognitive processes associated with the processing of threat, including processes of selective attention. Existing data may be interpreted to suggest that maltreatment is associated with an automatic attentional engagement with threatening cues, or that maltreatment is associated with generally poorer attention control. Using a pair of attention tasks, this study sought to examine whether maltreatment was associated with threat‐related interference on attention processing and if this could be explained by poorer attentional control capacity. METHOD: Fifty‐one maltreated adolescents from an out‐of‐home care sample in New South Wales, Australia were recruited to complete two attention tasks. Data from 24 of these participants were compared with that of a sample of non‐maltreated peers matched on gender, age, cognitive ability, and household income to identify maltreatment‐associated group differences. Data from all participants were then used to explore the degree to which attention variables correlated with continuous measures of internalising symptoms, subtypes, and severity of maltreatment. RESULTS: On the first task, maltreated adolescents showed significant interference from an irrelevant but non‐emotional distractor on reaction times when completing a central letter identification task under low perceptual task conditions. On the second task, maltreated adolescents also showed similar interference on a probe‐identification task that involved ignoring threatening (angry face) distractors, again under low perceptual load. CONCLUSIONS: These data may suggest difficulties exercising attention control following early maltreatment. These may contribute to the emergence of psychiatric disorders and other difficulties for those exposed to maltreatment. John Wiley & Sons Australia, Ltd 2016-08-18 2016-09 /pmc/articles/PMC5123582/ /pubmed/27942048 http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/ajpy.12139 Text en © 2016 The Authors. Australian Journal of Psychology published by John Wiley & Sons Australia, Ltd on behalf of Australian Psychological Society This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
spellingShingle Special Issue
Gray, Paul
Baker, Helen M.
Scerif, Gaia
Lau, Jennifer Y.F.
Early maltreatment effects on adolescent attention control to non‐emotional and emotional distractors
title Early maltreatment effects on adolescent attention control to non‐emotional and emotional distractors
title_full Early maltreatment effects on adolescent attention control to non‐emotional and emotional distractors
title_fullStr Early maltreatment effects on adolescent attention control to non‐emotional and emotional distractors
title_full_unstemmed Early maltreatment effects on adolescent attention control to non‐emotional and emotional distractors
title_short Early maltreatment effects on adolescent attention control to non‐emotional and emotional distractors
title_sort early maltreatment effects on adolescent attention control to non‐emotional and emotional distractors
topic Special Issue
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5123582/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27942048
http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/ajpy.12139
work_keys_str_mv AT graypaul earlymaltreatmenteffectsonadolescentattentioncontroltononemotionalandemotionaldistractors
AT bakerhelenm earlymaltreatmenteffectsonadolescentattentioncontroltononemotionalandemotionaldistractors
AT scerifgaia earlymaltreatmenteffectsonadolescentattentioncontroltononemotionalandemotionaldistractors
AT laujenniferyf earlymaltreatmenteffectsonadolescentattentioncontroltononemotionalandemotionaldistractors