Elsevier

Child Abuse & Neglect

Volume 29, Issue 9, September 2005, Pages 1015-1029
Child Abuse & Neglect

Managing emotion in a maltreating context: A pilot study examining child neglect

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chiabu.2005.01.006Get rights and content

Abstract

Objective:

The primary goal of this pilot study was to examine emotion management skills (i.e., emotional understanding, emotion regulation) in children who had experienced neglect and a control group to determine the ways that neglect may interfere with children's emotional development.

Method:

Participants included children 6–12 years of age and their mothers (neglect group, N = 24; control, N = 24). Participants completed questionnaires and an interview that assessed children's emotional understanding and emotion regulation.

Results:

Findings indicated that neglected children, compared to their nonmaltreated peers, demonstrated lower understanding of negative emotions (i.e., anger, sadness) and fewer adaptive emotion regulation skills. Further, neglected children expected less support and more conflict from mothers in response to displays of negative emotion and reported that they were more likely to attempt to inhibit the expression of negative emotion.

Conclusions:

Findings suggest that neglect may interfere with the normal acquisition of emotional understanding and emotion regulation skills, highlighting the importance of addressing these skills in the context of clinical intervention with neglected children.

Résumé

Objectif:

Le but principal de cette étude pilote fut d’examiner combien habiles sont les enfants victimes de négligence à gérer leurs émotions. Ils ont été comparés à un groupe contrôle. L’objectif était de voir comment la négligence peut entraver le développement émotionnel des enfants.

Méthode:

L’étude comprenait des enfants âgés de 6 à 12 ans, ainsi que leur mère (groupe d’enfants négligés, N = 24; groupe contrôle, N = 24). Tous ont complété un questionnaire et ont été interviewés afin d’évaluer la compréhension qu’ont les enfants de leurs émotions et la gestion de ces émotions.

Résultats:

Les constats nous apprennent que les enfants négligés, comparés aux enfants non maltraités, manifestent une compréhension plus faible des émotions négatives telles que la rage et la tristesse, et sont moins capables de modérer leurs émotions. De plus, lorsqu’ils expriment des émotions négatives, ils sont moins portés à s’attendre que leur mère leur apporte un appui mais plutôt le conflit. Ils avouent être portés à réprimer leurs émotions négatives.

Conclusions:

Les constats portent à croire que la négligence pourrait bien entraver le développement normal de la compréhension des émotions et de leur contrôle. On souligne l’importance de se pencher sur ces compétences lorsqu’on s’occupe des enfants négligés.

Resumen

Objetivo:

El objetivo principal de este estudio piloto fue examinar las habilidades para manejar la emoción (por ejemplo comprensión emocional, regulación emocional) en niños que habían vivido negligencia y un grupo control para determinar las maneras en que la negligencia puede interferir en el desarrollo emocional de los niños.

Método:

Los participantes incluyeron niños de 6 a 12 años de edad y sus madres (grupo con negligencia, N = 24; grupo control, N = 24). Los participantes completaron cuestionarios y una entrevista que evaluaba la comprensión emocional y la regulación emocional de los niños.

Resultados:

Los hallazgos indicaron que los niños que sufrieron negligencia, comparados con sus compañeros no maltratados, demostraron más baja comprensión de emociones negativas (por ejemplo ira, tristeza), y menos habilidades adaptativas de regulación de la emoción. Además, los niños que sufrieron negligencia esperaban menos apoyo y más conflicto de sus madres en respuesta a demostraciones de emociones negativas y reportaron que tenían más tendencia a exhibir la expresión de emoción negativa.

Conclusiones:

Los hallazgos sugieren que la negligencia puede interferir en la adquisición normal de la comprensión emocional y las habilidades de regulación de la emoción, destacándose la importancia de tomar en cuenta estas habilidades en el contexto de la intervención clínica con niños que han sufrido negligencia.

Introduction

Considerable recent attention has been directed toward understanding the development of emotion management skills and the importance of these skills to children's psychosocial functioning (Barrett & Campos, 1987; Gross, 1998, Parke et al., 1992; Saarni, Mumme, & Campos, 1998). Research in this area has focused primarily on skills within three emotion management categories: (a) encoding and decoding of emotions, which involves the ability to recognize emotional expressions of others and to produce clear, appropriate emotional displays; (b) emotional understanding, which involves understanding the causes and consequences of emotional expression as well as appropriate responses to emotional displays of others; and (c) emotion regulation, which involves the ability to regulate emotional expression and emotional experience. According to functionalist theory (Barrett & Campos, 1987; Saarni et al., 1998), these skills are fundamental to emotional competence because they enable children to apply their knowledge about emotion strategically when responding to emotionally arousing situations, facilitating their adaptation to the social environment. As such, deficits in emotion management skills may place children at risk for other adaptational failures in development (e.g., poor peer relations, psychopathology). Consistent with these theoretical tenets, skills within these emotion management categories have been demonstrated to relate to social competence and psychological health (Cook, Greenberg, & Kusche, 1994; Denham, McKinley, Couchoud, & Holt, 1990; Denham et al., 2001, Eisenberg et al., 2001, Fabes et al., 2001; Rogosch, Cicchetti, & Aber, 1995; Shipman, Schneider, & Brown, 2004).

Few studies have examined the development of emotion management skills in children whose life experiences disrupt the normal course of emotional development. In particular, within the child neglect literature (see Erickson & Egeland for review, 1996), researchers have focused on the psychosocial outcomes of neglect (e.g., psychopathology, poor peer relations), with little attention to the developmental processes that may underlie these outcomes. This is surprising given that research suggests that children who experience neglect are at risk for psychosocial difficulties characterized by emotion dysregulation. In particular, research indicates that neglected children are at risk for internalizing and externalizing behavioral problems (e.g., depression, aggressive behavior) and peer rejection (Erickson & Egeland, 1996; Erickson, Egeland, & Pianta, 1989; Gaudin, Polansky, & Kilpatrick, 1993). Further, neglectful parents lack a number of characteristics thought to be important to the development of emotion management skills. In particular, neglectful mothers provide less support and acknowledgement of their children, show lower levels of emotional expression in the parent-child relationship, and provide little exchange of emotional information (Aragona & Eyeberg, 1981; Bousha & Twentyman, 1984; Crittenden, 1981, Gaudin et al., 1996). In addition, related research investigating physical and sexual abuse has demonstrated that maltreating parents socialize emotion management skills differently than nonmaltreating parents (e.g., provide less support in response to children's emotion, engage in less emotion-related discussion) and that maltreated children show deficits in skills across all three emotion management categories (Camras, Sachs-Alter, & Ribordy, 1996; Shipman and Zeman, 1999, Shipman and Zeman, 2001; Shipman, Zeman, Penza, & Champion, 2000). Increased understanding of the impact of neglect on emotional development is essential given that neglect is the most common form of child maltreatment, with 552,000 children estimated to experience neglect each year (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2002).

Taken together, this research suggests that neglected children are at risk for psychosocial difficulties characterized by emotion dysregulation and that they develop in a context that is likely to interfere with competent emotional development. To date, however, little research has examined the ways in which neglect may interfere with normative emotional development. Research in this area will help identify processes that underlie neglected children's risk for adaptational failures in development. For example, emotional understanding skills may facilitate children's ability to establish and maintain constructive peer relationships whereas deficits in emotional understanding may place them at risk for peer rejection. Identifying processes in emotional development that may underlie neglected children's risk for negative outcomes will facilitate the development of prevention and intervention programs for neglected children and their families by targeting skills essential to children's socioemotional competence and psychological adjustment.

To date, there has been little research that investigates emotion management skills in children who have experienced neglect. One available study (Pollak, Cicchetti, Hornung, & Reed, 2000) examined neglected children's ability to decode facial expression in others as compared to a nonmaltreated control group. Inclusionary criteria for the neglect group required that children had experienced physical neglect (i.e., the child's minimum physical needs were not met) with no history of physical or sexual abuse. Findings indicated that neglected children demonstrated difficulty identifying facial expressions of negative emotion as well as a response bias in which they tended to misidentify facial expressions of other negative emotions as expressions of sadness. Related research has examined the impact of child maltreatment on emotional development more broadly by including samples of children who experienced different types of maltreatment (e.g., emotional, physical, sexual abuse, and/or neglect). Findings from these studies suggest that maltreated children demonstrate difficulties in the recognition and production of emotional expression (Camras et al., 1996), difficulties identifying situational causes of emotion (Rogosh et al., 1995), and emotion dysregulation (Shields & Cicchetti, 1997). Although these studies provide helpful information, it is not possible to separate the effect of neglect from other types of maltreatment given that the samples included children with different types of maltreatment experiences. Separation of maltreatment type is important given that the quality of the maltreating environment differs in significant ways for abused as compared to neglected children. Neglect involves acts of omission (e.g., lack of parental involvement, inadequate care) whereas physical abuse involves acts of commission (e.g., hostility and aggression directed at the child). As such, neglectful parents are unlikely to provide the support and scaffolding necessary to facilitate their children's emotional development.

The present study, investigated emotion management skills in children who had experienced physical neglect in order to determine how developing within a neglectful context may interfere with competent emotional development. In particular, this study examined emotional understanding and emotion regulation skills in children as a function of maltreatment status (i.e., neglect, control) and type of emotion (i.e., anger, sadness). Anger and sadness were included because these emotions are commonly experienced in childhood and, when managed appropriately, are thought to facilitate children's adaptation to their social environment by helping them effectively manage daily social interactions (e.g., resolving conflict with parent or peer for anger, obtaining support for sadness). In addition, each of these emotions is posited to serve a unique function for the child (e.g., overcoming an obstacle to goal attainment for anger, eliciting support or assistance for sadness). In turn, they are expected to result in a different response from the child's social partner. Normative research has demonstrated that different socialization histories exist for anger and sadness and that children's expectancies regarding the interpersonal outcomes of their emotional expression vary by type of emotion (Casey & Fuller, 1994; Jenkins & Ball, 2000; Zeman & Shipman, 1996).

Based on functionalist tenets and a review of the empirical literature, a set of hypotheses was developed. With regard to emotional understanding, normative research indicates the importance of parental discussion of emotion and parental support in response to the child's emotion (Denham, 1998). Given the nature of the neglectful environment (e.g., parental unavailability to facilitate emotional discussion and provide support and assistance; Erickson & Egeland, 1996), we hypothesized that neglected children would demonstrate lower levels of emotional understanding than their nonmaltreated peers. With regard to emotion regulation, normative research suggests the importance of parental scaffolding (e.g., support in regulating emotional arousal) in the development of adaptive emotion regulation skills (Saarni, 1999, Thompson, 1994). In addition, research suggests that neglected children are at risk for self-regulatory difficulties (e.g., behavioral problems) (Egeland, Sroufe, & Erickson, 1983; Erickson & Egeland, 1996; Reidy, 1977). Therefore, we hypothesized that neglected children, as compared to their nonmaltreated peers, would demonstrate fewer adaptive strategies for managing emotional arousal and higher levels of emotion dysregulation. In addition, we hypothesized that neglected children would expect to receive less support and more conflict from their mothers in response to emotional displays and would be less likely to show their emotion to their mothers. Finally, type of emotion (i.e., anger, sadness) was considered given normative research that suggests that children's emotion management strategies vary as a function of the type of emotion experienced (e.g., Zeman & Shipman, 1996).

Section snippets

Participants

Twenty-four neglected children between 6 and 12 years of age (M age = 9 years, 3 month, SD = 2 years) and their mothers were recruited from a parenting program for maltreating parents provided by a mental health agency that was independent of Children's Protective Services (CPS). Participants were recruited during the orientation phase of the parenting program to avoid potential treatment confounds. Inclusionary criteria for the neglect group required that the child had experienced physical neglect

Emotional Understanding Interview (EUI)

A main effect emerged for group, F(1, 46) = 5.57, p < .05, in which neglected children had significantly lower emotional understanding scores than non-maltreated children. This finding indicates that neglected children demonstrated more difficulty understanding emotion (e.g., causes and consequences of emotion, appropriate response to emotions in others) than non-maltreated children. There were no differences as a function of emotion type and no significant interaction between group status and

Discussion

The present study examined emotional understanding and emotion regulation skills in neglected and nonneglected children. In general, findings demonstrated that neglected children have lower levels of emotional understanding, fewer adaptive emotion regulation skills, and less effective coping strategies than their nonmaltreated peers. Further, neglected children expect less support and more conflict from their mothers in response to emotional displays and are more likely to dissemble emotional

References (47)

  • B. Egeland et al.

    The developmental consequence of different patterns of maltreatment

    Child Abuse & Neglect

    (1983)
  • J.M. Gaudin et al.

    Family functioning in neglectful families

    Child Abuse & Neglect

    (1996)
  • A.L. Gross et al.

    Children's understanding of emotion from facial expressions and situations: a review

    Developmental Review

    (1991)
  • J.A. Aragona et al.

    Neglected children: Mother's report of child behavior problems and observed verbal behavior

    Child Development

    (1981)
  • K.C. Barrett et al.

    Perspectives on emotional development. II. A functionalist approach to emotions

  • D.M. Bousha et al.

    Mother-child interactional style in abuse, neglect, and control groups: Naturalistic observations in the home

    Journal of Abnormal Psychology

    (1984)
  • L. Camras et al.

    Emotion understanding in maltreated children: recognition of facial expressions and integration with other emotion cues

  • R. Casey et al.

    Maternal regulation of children's emotions

    Journal of Nonverbal Behavior. Special. Issue: Development of Nonverbal Behavior. II. Social Development and Nonverbal Behavior

    (1994)
  • Cassidy, J., & Parke, R. D. (1991). Children's emotional understanding and peer relations. Symposium presented at the...
  • J. Cassidy et al.

    Family-peer connections: the roles of emotional expressiveness within the family and children's understanding of emotions

    Child Development

    (1992)
  • P.M. Cole

    Children's spontaneous control of facial expression

    Child Development

    (1986)
  • P.M. Cole et al.

    The development of emotion regulation and dysregulation: a clinical perspective

    Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development

    (1994)
  • P.M. Cole et al.

    Expressive control during a disappointment: variations related to preschoolers’ behavior problems

    Developmental Psychology

    (1994)
  • E. Cook et al.

    The relations between emotional understanding, intellectual functioning, and disruptive behavior problems in elementary-school-aged children

    Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology

    (1994)
  • P. Crittenden

    Abusing, neglecting, problematic, and adequate dyads: differentiating by patterns of interaction

    Merrill-Palmer Quarterly

    (1981)
  • S. Denham

    Emotional development in young children

    (1998)
  • S.A. Denham et al.

    Preschoolers at play: co-socialisers of emotional and social competence

    International Journal of Behavioral Development

    (2001)
  • S. Denham et al.

    Emotional and behavioral predictors of preschool peer ratings

    Child Development

    (1990)
  • N. Eisenberg et al.

    Parental socialization of children's dysregulated expression of emotion and externalizing problems

    Journal of Family Psychology

    (2001)
  • M.F. Erickson et al.

    Child neglect

  • M.F. Erickson et al.

    The effects of maltreatment on the development of young children

  • R.A. Fabes et al.

    Parental coping with children's negative emotions: Relations with children's emotional and social responding

    Child Development

    (2001)
  • D. Fuchs et al.

    Children's expected interpersonal consequences of communicating their affective state and reported likelihood of expression

    Child Development

    (1988)
  • Cited by (153)

    • The development of empathy in child maltreatment contexts

      2022, Child Abuse and Neglect
      Citation Excerpt :

      The associations of CEA and CN with lower levels of empathy are consistent with research demonstrating robust negative associations between these experiences and emotion competence broadly. In particular, CEA has been found to predict reduced emotional awareness (Berzenski & Yates, 2010; Kapeleris & Paivio, 2011) and CN has been consistently associated with lower levels of emotion knowledge (Pollak et al., 2000; Shipman et al., 2005). Given that awareness and understanding of emotions are critical substrates of the more complex capability of empathy, it is not surprising that CEA and CN emerged as barriers to empathy development in this study.

    View all citing articles on Scopus

    The first author was supported by the National Institute of Mental Health (1R03 MH60281–01A1) in the completion of this project.

    View full text