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Less efficient detection of positive facial expressions in parents at risk of engaging in child physical abuse

BACKGROUND: Parental physical punishment (e.g., spanking) of children can gradually escalate into child physical abuse (CPA). According to social-information processing (SIP) models of aggressive behaviors, distorted social cognitive mechanisms can increase the risk of maladaptive parenting behavior...

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Autores principales: Shimada, Koji, Kasaba, Ryoko, Yao, Akiko, Tomoda, Akemi
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2019
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6712715/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31455426
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s40359-019-0333-9
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author Shimada, Koji
Kasaba, Ryoko
Yao, Akiko
Tomoda, Akemi
author_facet Shimada, Koji
Kasaba, Ryoko
Yao, Akiko
Tomoda, Akemi
author_sort Shimada, Koji
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: Parental physical punishment (e.g., spanking) of children can gradually escalate into child physical abuse (CPA). According to social-information processing (SIP) models of aggressive behaviors, distorted social cognitive mechanisms can increase the risk of maladaptive parenting behaviors by changing how parents detect, recognize, and act on information from their social environments. In this study, we aimed to identify differences between mothers with a low and high risk of CPA regarding how quickly they detect positive facial expressions. METHODS: Based on their use of spanking to discipline children, 52 mothers were assigned to a low- (n = 39) or high-CPA-risk group (n = 13). A single-target facial emotional search (face-in-the-crowd) task was used, which required participants to search through an array of faces to determine whether a target emotional face was present in a crowd of non-target neutral faces. Search efficiency index was computed by subtracting the search time for target-present trials from that for target-absent trials. RESULTS: The high-CPA-risk group searched significantly less efficiently for the happy, but not sad, faces, than did the low-CPA-risk group; meanwhile, self-reported emotional ratings (i.e., valence and arousal) of the faces did not differ between the groups. CONCLUSIONS: Consistent with the SIP models, our findings suggest that low- and high-CPA-risk mothers differ in how they rapidly detect positive facial expressions, but not in how they explicitly evaluate them. On a CPA-risk continuum, less efficient detection of positive facial expressions in the initial processes of the SIP system may begin to occur in the physical-discipline stage, and decrease the likelihood of positive interpersonal experiences, consequently leading to an increased risk of CPA.
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spelling pubmed-67127152019-09-04 Less efficient detection of positive facial expressions in parents at risk of engaging in child physical abuse Shimada, Koji Kasaba, Ryoko Yao, Akiko Tomoda, Akemi BMC Psychol Research Article BACKGROUND: Parental physical punishment (e.g., spanking) of children can gradually escalate into child physical abuse (CPA). According to social-information processing (SIP) models of aggressive behaviors, distorted social cognitive mechanisms can increase the risk of maladaptive parenting behaviors by changing how parents detect, recognize, and act on information from their social environments. In this study, we aimed to identify differences between mothers with a low and high risk of CPA regarding how quickly they detect positive facial expressions. METHODS: Based on their use of spanking to discipline children, 52 mothers were assigned to a low- (n = 39) or high-CPA-risk group (n = 13). A single-target facial emotional search (face-in-the-crowd) task was used, which required participants to search through an array of faces to determine whether a target emotional face was present in a crowd of non-target neutral faces. Search efficiency index was computed by subtracting the search time for target-present trials from that for target-absent trials. RESULTS: The high-CPA-risk group searched significantly less efficiently for the happy, but not sad, faces, than did the low-CPA-risk group; meanwhile, self-reported emotional ratings (i.e., valence and arousal) of the faces did not differ between the groups. CONCLUSIONS: Consistent with the SIP models, our findings suggest that low- and high-CPA-risk mothers differ in how they rapidly detect positive facial expressions, but not in how they explicitly evaluate them. On a CPA-risk continuum, less efficient detection of positive facial expressions in the initial processes of the SIP system may begin to occur in the physical-discipline stage, and decrease the likelihood of positive interpersonal experiences, consequently leading to an increased risk of CPA. BioMed Central 2019-08-27 /pmc/articles/PMC6712715/ /pubmed/31455426 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s40359-019-0333-9 Text en © The Author(s). 2019 Open AccessThis article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.
spellingShingle Research Article
Shimada, Koji
Kasaba, Ryoko
Yao, Akiko
Tomoda, Akemi
Less efficient detection of positive facial expressions in parents at risk of engaging in child physical abuse
title Less efficient detection of positive facial expressions in parents at risk of engaging in child physical abuse
title_full Less efficient detection of positive facial expressions in parents at risk of engaging in child physical abuse
title_fullStr Less efficient detection of positive facial expressions in parents at risk of engaging in child physical abuse
title_full_unstemmed Less efficient detection of positive facial expressions in parents at risk of engaging in child physical abuse
title_short Less efficient detection of positive facial expressions in parents at risk of engaging in child physical abuse
title_sort less efficient detection of positive facial expressions in parents at risk of engaging in child physical abuse
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6712715/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31455426
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s40359-019-0333-9
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