Table 3.
Effects of Childhood Maltreatment on Emotional Processing in Adults.
| Author (Year) | Emotions Affected | Type of Reaction | Population/Maltreatment Type | Compared to Other Emotions |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Brüne et al. (2013) | Anger | Avoidance | Physical and emotional neglect and abuse | No avoidance to happy faces |
| Dannlowski et al. (2012) | Threat (fear/anger) | Increased right amygdala responsiveness | ||
| Davis et al. (2014) | Happiness | Avoidance of positive facial stimuli | History of abuse combined with attachment anxiety only | No attention bias to threat |
| Dayton et al. (2016) | Anger Fear Distress |
Heightened perceptions of negative infant emotions (fear,
anger, and distress) Negative attribution bias (ambiguous infant expressions = negative) |
Histories of interpersonal aggression and conflict | |
| Demers et al. (2018) | Anger Fear |
Increased hippocampus–amygdala connectivity | ||
| English et al. (2018) | Fear | Quicker identification of fear under the high cognitive load condition | No significant predictive effects for anger | |
| Fang et al. (2019) | Anger Fear Happiness |
Larger N170 amplitude in the maltreated group No differences in P100 amplitude |
No difference in N170 amplitude for disgust | |
| Fani et al. (2011) | Happiness | Attentional bias | Sexual, physical, or emotional abuse With and without childhood maltreatment and/or current PTSD/depressive symptoms |
Relative to neutral faces |
| Gibb et al. (2009) | Angry | Attention and interpretation biases (increased sensitivity in the detection of angry expressions at lower levels of emotional intensity) | History of moderate to severe childhood abuse | No biases for happy or sad faces |
| Gong et al. (2019) | Anger Disgust Fear Happiness |
Longer latency of P100 (indicating a dysfunction of the visual pathway) | Young adults with high levels of negative schizotypy and childhood maltreatment | |
| Hartling et al. (2019) | All trials (four basic + 20 complex emotions) | Lower ability to infer emotions | Individuals carrying a moderate to high Genetic Profile Score who have experienced Early life stress | |
| Jedd et al. (2015) | Anger Fear |
Greater activation in prefrontal cortex and basal
ganglia Increased amygdala connectivity with the hippocampus and prefrontal cortex Significantly less accurate during the emotion-matching task |
Compared to the nonmaltreated group | |
| Johnson et al. (2010) | Anger | Attentional avoidance | Individuals with a history of moderate to severe childhood physical abuse who also carried at least one copy of the 5-HTTLPR short allele. | Not happy or sad faces |
| Kim et al. (2014) | Own infant’s sadness | Blunted amygdala responses | Mothers who were classified as having unresolved trauma in the Adult Attachment Interview | Compared to happiness No differences in regard to unknown faces |
| Kirkham & Levita (2019) | Anger | Reduced avoidance (self-reported) | Only among participants with no evidence of mental illness and higher ELS scores | |
| Neukel et al. (2019) | Own-child happiness | Elevated activations in face perception and emotion processing networks (e.g., cuneus, MTG, STG, parahippocampal gyri). | Compared to nonmaltreated mothers | Compared to neutral No differences for sad vs. neutral across groups |
| Olsavsky et al. (2019) | Anger Fear Distress Happiness Neutral Negative-valenced stimuli |
Blunted bilateral amygdala reactivity to infant faces
(higher amygdala activation to infant faces was associated
with greater sensitivity during mother–infant
interaction) Superior temporal gyrus activation |
Compared to nonexposed mothers Regardless of CME |
Regardless of emotion |
| Peters et al. (2018) | Fear Fear and Anger |
Enhanced corticolimbic reactivity Greater activation in visual processing and somatosensory areas |
Internalizing psychopathology + Early life adversity | Versus shapes Versus shapes No significant findings for sad versus shapes or happy versus shapes |
| Redlich et al. (2015) | Anger Fear |
Increased amygdala reactivity | Higher neural response in C allele carriers compared to T
homozygotes. Emotional abuse and emotional neglect showed the strongest association with amygdala responsiveness |
|
| Russo et al. (2015) | Anger | Poorer performance in facial emotion recognition | Bipolar disorder patients with a positive childhood history of emotional neglect | No significant differences for disgust, fear, sadness, surprise, or happiness |
| Schwaiger et al. (2019) | Anger Fear |
Increase in emotion recognition accuracy | Non-significant for sad and happy faces | |
| Suzuki et al. (2015) | Fear | More errors (misattributions) | Healthy individuals (no depression) with a history of childhood maltreatment | Compared to anger |
| van Harmelen et al. (2013) | Anger Fear Sadness Happiness Neutral |
Enhanced bilateral amygdala reactivity | Independent of psychiatric status | Smaller effect sizes for neutral faces |
| Veague & Hooley (2014) | Happiness | Difficulties detecting (when stimulus exposure times were short [500 ms]) | Abuse history was not associated with recognition of anger or fear and unrelated to anger bias |
Note. ELS = Early Life Stress, MTG = Middle Temporal Gyrus, STG = Superior Temporal Gyrus, CME = Child Maltreatment Exposure.