Elsevier

Child Abuse & Neglect

Volume 35, Issue 4, April 2011, Pages 249-266
Child Abuse & Neglect

Event-related potentials: Search for positive and negative child-related schemata in individuals at low and high risk for child physical abuse

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chiabu.2011.01.002Get rights and content

Abstract

Objective

The present investigation used event-related potentials (ERPs, N400 and N300) to determine the extent to which individuals at low and high risk for child physical abuse (CPA) have pre-existing positive and negative child-related schemata that can be automatically activated by ambiguous child stimuli.

Methods

ERP data were obtained from individuals at low (n = 13) and high risk (n = 12) for CPA and used in a procedure check, from which a sub-group of low-risk (n = 7) and high-risk (n = 7) individuals were selected for inclusion in the main study. ERP data were collected during the presentation of a priming paradigm consisting of non-child pictures (primes) and congruent and incongruent word descriptors (targets). ERP data also were collected during a second priming paradigm consisting of ambiguous child pictures (primes) and positive and negative word descriptors (targets). Data from this second paradigm were used to test the hypothesis that low-risk and high-risk individuals’ putative pre-existing child-related schemata (i.e., positive schemata in low-risk individuals and negative schemata in high-risk individuals) provide a context that influences whether targets (positive or negative word descriptors) are congruent or incongruent with ambiguous child picture primes.

Results

Analyses revealed the expected larger N400 waves in response to non-child picture, incongruent word pairs. There were no N400 differences between risk groups nor were there any risk group interactions, indicating that all participants responded in a similar manner to the non-child picture, congruent/incongruent word presentations. However, when ambiguous child picture primes were used with positive and negative word descriptors, low-risk individuals showed greater N400 and N300 responses to negative, relative to positive, word descriptors; whereas high-risk individuals showed no ERP differences with respect to positive and negative word descriptors.

Conclusions

ERP evidence supports the view that low-risk individuals have greater accessibility to pre-existing positive (relative to negative) child-related schemata, which may reduce the likelihood of negative child-related evaluations. In contrast, high-risk individuals have pre-existing positive and negative child-related schemata that are equally accessible. Hence, high-risk, relative to low-risk, individuals appear to have greater accessibility to negative child-related schemata that may increase the likelihood of negative child-related evaluations and attributions that have been linked to CPA risk.

Introduction

Using a cognitive behavioral perspective (e.g., Bandura, 1986, Heider, 1958, Markus and Zajonc, 1985, Mischel, 1973), social information processing (SIP) models assume that, based on experience, individuals develop cognitive schemata (information structures, e.g., beliefs about others) that are stored in long term memory (LTM). These schemata are believed to impact information processing activities (e.g., attributions, evaluations) that mediate an individual's responses to environmental stimuli. Consistent with this view, the SIP model of child physical abuse (CPA; Milner, 1993, Milner, 2000, Milner, 2003) describes multiple cognitive components that are believed to account for a variety of problems in parenting, including verbal and physical child assault. The components of the SIP model of CPA (many of which are found in other cognitive behavioral models of child abuse, e.g., Azar et al., 2008, Bugental et al., 2002, Wolfe, 1987) consist of pre-existing schemata, three cognitive processing stages, and a fourth cognitive/behavioral stage of response execution. The three cognitive processing stages include: perceptions of social behavior; interpretations and evaluations that give meaning to social behavior; and information integration and response selection processes. The fourth cognitive behavioral stage involves response implementation and monitoring activities.

A core proposition of the SIP model of CPA (Milner, 2000) is that pre-existing schemata influence parental perceptions of child behavior and child-related cognitions at other processing stages. The assumption includes the view that parents develop and maintain global (related to all children) and specific (related to their own children) child-related beliefs that guide their parenting behavior. Specifically, high-risk and abusive individuals are believed to have aggression-related schemata (e.g., negative beliefs about children) stored in LTM. This information is activated by relevant stimuli (e.g., the presence of a child) and is believed to increase the likelihood that high-risk and abusive individuals will make negative child-related attributions and evaluations when processing child stimuli. To the extent that pre-existing, negative child-related schemata are activated automatically, at-risk and physically abusive individuals may not recognize their own contributions (i.e., their interpretive biases) to their conscious processing of child stimuli. It also has been proposed that low-risk individuals have relatively more accessible positive child-related schemata stored in LTM (Crouch et al., 2010). If this can be demonstrated, then low-risk individuals’ positive child-related schemata may serve as a protective factor by reducing the likelihood of negative child-related interpretations and evaluations. Given the central role of child-related schemata in the SIP model of CPA, the present study sought to provide additional data to demonstrate that high- and low-risk individuals (even before they have children) have different levels of accessibility with respect to positive and negative child-related schemata.

Several recent studies designed to demonstrate that high-risk, relative to low-risk, for CPA parents have more accessible negative child-related schema stored in LTM have produced mixed results. Farc, Crouch, Skowronski, and Milner (2008) conducted two experiments (one involving supraliminal and one involving subliminal priming) that investigated the impact of exposure to hostility-related cues on hostile trait ratings of ambiguous (with respect to the level of cooperativeness and hostility) child pictures in high- and low-risk parents. As proposed in the SIP model of CPA, in both experiments Farc et al. found that high-risk, relative to low-risk, parents rated ambiguous child pictures as more hostile. Further, parents who were primed with hostile words, compared to parents who were not, rated ambiguous child pictures as more hostile, with the highest hostility ratings occurring among high-risk parents primed with hostility. Consistent with the view that the priming involved an automatic process, follow-up data indicated that participants lacked awareness of the impact of priming on their ratings.

Using a cued recall task, Crouch et al. (2010) reported that although high risk for CPA parents and low risk for CPA parents were similar in their ability to recall ambiguous child care contexts when cued by negative terms, low-risk, compared to high-risk, parents recalled more child care information when cued by positive terms. Additional assessment of the recall difference scores (negative minus positive recall) revealed that high-risk, compared to low-risk, parents recalled ambiguous child contexts in more negative relative to positive terms. Thus, in this study, the risk group differences were the result of low-risk, relative to high-risk, parents recalling more when prompted by positive cues, supporting the view that low-risk parents have relatively more accessible positive than negative child-related schemata stored in LTM.

Although the priming and cued recall studies described above provide methods for investigating the extent to which parents have negative or positive child-related schemata, the use of event-related potentials (ERPs) to assess implicit information processes provides an alternative to approaches drawn from social psychology. In cognitive psychology, ERPs have been used to study electrical brain correlates of semantic information processing. ERPs are small fluctuations in brain voltage that are usually recorded from scalp electrodes. They in response to discrete external events and are viewed as representing information processing activities (Bartholow, Fabiani, Gratton, & Bettencourt, 2001). A discussion of a frequently studied ERP, the N400 and a related N300, which have been used in information processing research, is presented in the next section. In addition, the rationale for using N400 and N300 to test one aspect of the SIP model of CPA (the putative presence of negative and positive child-related information structures in individuals who are at high risk for CPA and low risk for CPA, respectively) is presented.

Section snippets

N400

In cognitive neuroscience, ERP studies have demonstrated the presence of a negative-going brain wave, the N400, that peaks approximately 400 ms after the presentation of a prime (e.g., sentence) followed by a semantically incongruent target (e.g., word), whereas a smaller N400 is observed when the prime is followed by a congruent target. In the original N400 semantic priming study, Kutas and Hillyard (1980) found that when the final word of a sentence was semantically incongruent with the

The present study

As a procedure check, the current study first sought to demonstrate that both high risk for CPA individuals and low risk for CPA individuals show the expected N400 effects when non-child picture primes are followed by semantically unrelated target words and relatively less N400 effects when non-child picture primes are followed by semantically related target words; a phenomenon that has been shown repeatedly in previous studies in other populations. Specifically, it was expected that although

Participants

For the procedure check part of the study, N400 data are reported for 25 undergraduate students (11 women and 14 men). These participants had a mean age of 19.56 (SD = 1.32) years and a mean educational level of 14.02 (SD = 1.19) years. Eighty-four percent of the individuals were single; the remaining 16% were living with a partner. None of the participants were parents. Participants identified their race/ethnicity as African American/Black (28%), White (48%), Hispanic (20%), and more than 1

Procedure

Upon arrival at a university research building, each participant was given an informed consent that was read to them while they read along (the informed consent and this project had review board approval). After having an opportunity to ask questions and sign the consent form, participants were given a tour of the EEG laboratory and then seated in a comfortable chair in a sound-attenuated, electrically shielded experimental chamber. Electrodes were attached and the participant was given

Child abuse risk group scores

On the CAP Inventory abuse scale, among the 25 participants used in the procedure check part of the study, 13 individuals had valid high-risk for CPA scores (M = 237.54, SD = 58.37, range 168–345) and 12 individuals had valid low-risk for CPA scores (M = 40.08, SD = 21.18, range 11–82). Given that participants were grouped on the basis of CAP Inventory scores, as expected the mean abuse score for the high-risk group was significantly higher than the mean abuse score for the low-risk group, F(1, 23) = 

Discussion

The procedure check part of the present study indicated that, as expected, the non-child picture (prime) and incongruent descriptive word (target) pairs, compared to non-child picture and congruent descriptive word pairs, elicited larger N400 waves. These findings are similar to previous picture (prime) congruent/incongruent word (target) studies (e.g., Byrne et al., 1999, van Schie et al., 2003). Consistent with interpretations made in previous research, larger N400s were interpreted as

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