USF St. Petersburg campus Faculty Publications
Parental expressed emotion-criticism and neural markers of sustained attention to emotional faces in children.
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2018
ISSN
1537-4416
Abstract
There is growing evidence for the role of environmental influences on children’s information-processing biases for affectively salient stimuli. The goal of this study was to extend this research by examining the relation between parental criticism (expressed emotion-criticism, or EE-Crit) and children’s processing of facial displays of emotion. Specifically, we examined the relation between EE-Crit and children’s sensitivity in detecting facial displays of emotion. We also examined a neural marker of sustained attention, the late positive potential (LPP) event-related potential component (ERP). Participants were 87 children (ages 7–11 years; 53.3% female, 77.8% Caucasian) and their parents (ages 24–71; 90% female, 88.9% Caucasian). Parents completed the Five-Minute Speech Sample to determine levels of EE-Crit toward their child. Children completed a morphed faces task during which behavioral and ERP responses were assessed. Although there were no group differences in sensitivity in detecting facial displays of emotion, we found that children of parents exhibiting high, compared to low, EE-Crit displayed less attention (smaller LPP magnitudes) to all facial displays of emotion (fearful, happy, sad). These results suggest that children of critical parents may exhibit an avoidant pattern of attention to affectively-salient interpersonal stimuli.
Language
US_en
Publisher
Routledge
Recommended Citation
James, K.M., Owens, M., Woody, M.L., Hall, N.T. & Gibb, B.E. (2018). Parental expressed emotion-criticism and neural markers of sustained attention to emotional faces in children. Journal of Clinical Child & Adolescent Psychology, doi: 10.1080/15374416.2018.1453365
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.
Comments
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