Heightened response to positive facial cues as a potential marker of resilience following childhood adversity.

Background: Childhood maltreatment profoundly influences social and emotional development, increasing psychiatric risk. Alterations in the implicit processing of threat-related cues following early abuse and neglect represent a marker of mental health vulnerability. Less is known about how early adversity influences the perception of positive social cues, despite their central role in establishing and maintaining social interactions and their association with better mental health outcomes.Methods: The sample consisted of 42 children and adolescents with substantiated childhood maltreatment experiences and 32 peers (mean age 13.3), matched on age, pubertal status, gender, socioeconomic status, ethnicity, and cognitive ability. A computerised experimental task assessed the perceived emotional intensity of positive (happy) and negative (fearful) facial expressions. Mental health symptoms were measured via self- and parental reports, and perceived social support was self-reported.Results: The experience of abuse and neglect was associated with heightened perceived intensity of positive facial cues. Cross-sectional post-hoc moderation and mediation analyses, employing a model-building approach, revealed that in maltreatment-exposed participants: (i) their increased response to positive facial cues was associated with lower symptoms; (ii) the presence of social support accounted for their heightened perceived intensity of positive facial cues; (iii) the presence of social support putatively contributed to lower symptoms by increasing the perceived intensity of positive facial cues. No group differences in perceived intensity of negative expressions were observed.Conclusions: These findings provide fresh insight into how positive faces are processed following maltreatment experience in childhood. Maltreatment experience was found to be associated with heightened perceived intensity of happy faces, which in turn was associated with better mental health and greater levels of social support. This suggests that heightened saliency of positive emotions acts protectively in children with maltreatment experience.

The impact of childhood maltreatment on perceiving positive social cues, especially explicit emotional intensity appraisal, is less understood compared to the extensive focus on its role in processing threat-related cues and psychiatric risk.In this study, we found that maltreatment experience was associated with heightened perceived intensity of happy faces, which in turn was associated with better mental health and greater levels of social support.These findings suggest that heightened saliency of positive emotions may act protectively in children with maltreatment experience.

Reduced prosocial motivation and effort in adolescents with conduct problems and callous-unemotional traits.

BACKGROUND: Prosocial behaviours - acts that benefit others - are of crucial importance for many species including humans. However, adolescents with conduct problems (CP), unlike their typically developing (TD) peers, demonstrate markedly reduced engagement in prosocial behaviours. This pattern is particularly pronounced in adolescents with CP and high levels of callous-unemotional traits (CP/HCU) who are at increased risk of developing psychopathy in adulthood. While a substantial amount of research has investigated the cognitive-affective mechanisms thought to underlie antisocial behaviour, much less is known about the mechanisms that could explain reduced prosocial behaviours in adolescents with CP. METHODS: Here we examined the willingness to exert effort to benefit oneself (self) and another person (other, prosocial condition) in children with CP/HCU, CP and lower levels of CU traits (CP/LCU) and their TD peers. The task captured both prosocial choices, and actual effort exerted following prosocial choices, in adolescent boys aged 11-16 (27 CP/HCU; 34 CP/LCU; 33 TD). We used computational modelling to reveal the mechanistic processes involved when choosing prosocial acts. RESULTS: We found that both CP/HCU and CP/LCU groups were more averse to initiating effortful prosocial acts than TD adolescents - both at a cognitive and at a behavioural level. Strikingly, even if they chose to initiate a prosocial act, the CP/HCU group exerted less effort following this prosocial choice than other groups. CONCLUSIONS: Our findings indicate that reduced exertion of effort to benefit others may be an important factor that differentiates adolescents with CP/HCU from their peers with CP/LCU. They offer new insights into what might drive low prosocial behaviour in adolescents with CP, including vulnerabilities that may particularly characterise those with high levels of CU traits.

EXAMINING MECHANISMS OF CHILDHOOD COGNITIVE CONTROL.

Childhood cognitive control is an important predictor for positive development, yet interventions seeking to improve it have provided mixed results. This is partly due to lack of clarity surrounding mechanisms of cognitive control, notably the role of inhibition and context monitoring. Here we use a randomized controlled trial to causally test the contributions of inhibition and context monitoring to cognitive control in childhood. Sixty children aged 6 to 9-years were assigned to three groups training either inhibition, context monitoring group or response speed using a gamified, highly variable and maximally adaptive training protocol. Whereas all children improved in the targeted cognitive functions over the course of training, pre-post data show that only the inhibition group improved on cognitive control. These findings serve as a first step in demonstrating the promise inhibition-based cognitive control interventions may hold.

Parenting boys with conduct problems and callous-unemotional traits: parent and child perspectives.

Parenting children with conduct problems (CP) is challenging, yet very little research has examined parenting using both quantitative and qualitative methods, from the perspective of the child and their parent/caregiver, and separately for those with high vs. low levels of callous-unemotional traits (HCU vs. LCU). One hundred and forty-six boys aged 11-16 [Typically developing (TD) n = 31; CP/HCU n = 35; CP/LCU n = 35] and their parents/caregivers completed the Alabama Parenting Questionnaire and provided a written qualitative statement describing their respective experiences of parenting/being parented. Parents/caregivers of CP/HCU boys reported more difficulty with child monitoring and supervision than parents of TD boys. This was echoed in qualitative reports of parents of CP/HCU boys reporting concerns regarding their child's safety. Parents/caregivers of both groups of CP boys reported more inconsistent discipline than parents of TD boys. Parental qualitative descriptions of challenging behavior in CP/HCU boys, and difficulties with setting boundaries and motivating CP/LCU boys, provided further insight to the potential triggers for inconsistent discipline. Qualitative reports from boys with CP indicated that they understood the parenting challenges their parents/caregivers faced. These findings replicate and extend previous work on the associations between parenting and CP. Children with CP/HCU and CP/LCU show some commonalities and differences in their parenting experiences and CP children and their parents/caregivers do not necessarily share all the same perceptions or concerns. CP interventions often involve parent/family engagement and this research highlights the continued importance of examining both parent and child perspectives.

Trust and childhood maltreatment: evidence of bias in appraisal of unfamiliar faces.

BACKGROUND: Child maltreatment is associated with poorer social functioning and increased risk of mental health problems in adolescence and adulthood, but the processes underlying these associations remain unclear. Although crucial for establishing and maintaining relationships, trust judgements have not been experimentally investigated in children who have experienced abuse and neglect. METHODS: A community-based sample of 75 children aged 8-16 years with maltreatment documented on the basis of social services records, and a group of 70 peers matched on age, gender, cognitive ability, socioeconomic status, and ethnicity took part in the study. Children completed a trustworthiness face-judgement task in which they appraised the trustworthiness of unfamiliar facial stimuli varying along a computationally modelled trustworthiness dimension. RESULTS: In line with clinical observations that childhood maltreatment is associated with an atypical pattern of trust processing, children with maltreatment experience were significantly less likely than their peers to rate unfamiliar faces as trustworthy. Moreover, they were more variable in their trust attributions than their peers. CONCLUSIONS: The study provides compelling experimental evidence that children with documented maltreatment perceive others as less trustworthy than their peers and are less consistent in their estimates of trustworthiness in others. Over time, alterations in trust processing may disrupt the development of social bonds and contribute to 'social thinning' (a reduction in the extent and quality of social relationships), leaving children more vulnerable to environmental stressors, increasing risk of mental health difficulties.