The relationship between childhood trauma and emotional recognition

In a recent study published in scientific reportresearchers evaluated the association between childhood trauma and emotion recognition accuracy (ERA).

study: Controlling for alexithymia and psychopathic traits reduces or eliminates the association between childhood trauma and emotion recognition.. Image credit: Suzanne Tucker/Shutterstock.com

background

Emotion recognition is very important in everyday interactions and relationships. Expressing emotions forms the core of social interaction and facilitates appropriate responses in social situations.

It is advantageous to be able to accurately recognize emotions, and people who can identify emotions more accurately are more likable. Furthermore, the categorization and recognition of emotional expressions can influence behavior.

Accurate recognition of emotions is therefore crucial, as misclassification can lead to inappropriate responses. Early childhood traumatic experiences are associated with decreased emotional recognition. Nevertheless, the extent of these effects and their relationship to individual differences remain unclear.

About research

In this study, researchers investigated the effect of childhood trauma on ERA and whether it differs by emotion, stimulus intensity, and modality (audiovisual, face, voice).

Participants were 18 years of age or older with normal or corrected-to-normal vision and no significant hearing loss and were recruited from online sites and undergraduate courses. Variables for the task included emotion, modality, and intensity level.

Individual difference variables were childhood trauma, psychopathy, and alexithymia. Participants completed the 28-item Childhood Trauma Questionnaire (CTQ-SF), the 29-item Self-Report Psychopathy Scale (SRP-SF), and the 20-item Toronto Alexithymia Questionnaire (TAS-20). The total score of these questionnaires was standardized and used for analysis.

For the emotional task, stimuli were drawn from a database containing clips of actors expressing six emotions (happy, angry, sad, surprised, disgust, fear) and neutral states across three modalities (audiovisual, facial, vocal). Selected.

Emotional stimuli were presented at normal or strong intensity. Silent videos of actors expressing neutral or emotional facial expressions were presented in the facial modality.

In the audio condition, participants heard an audio clip, and in the audiovisual condition, they were presented with a clip containing both video and audio. They identified the emotions expressed in the clips.

The experiment was performed online in four blocks: 1) personality questionnaire, 2) TAS-20 and face task, 3) SRP-SF and speech task, and 4) CTQ-SF and audiovisual task.

The effect of childhood trauma alone on ERA was examined using generalized mixed models, further controlling for psychopathy and alexithymia.

result

The analytic sample included 122 participants. In the model with childhood trauma and modality as fixed factors, significant main effects were found for childhood trauma and modality. However, the effect size was small. The researchers found that higher levels of childhood trauma were associated with lower ERA.

Accuracy was significantly better for audiovisual emotions than for vocal and facial emotions.

However, once psychopathy and alexithymia were controlled, childhood trauma became unimportant, but modality remained important.

There was no significant interaction between childhood trauma and modality, suggesting that the effects of trauma do not vary significantly across modalities. Furthermore, significant main effects of depicted childhood trauma and emotion were evident in models using these as fixed factors.

Accuracy differed significantly between fearful and neutral expressions. The accuracy of fear expression was significantly lower. Notably, childhood trauma remained significant even after controlling for psychopathy and alexithymia, depicting a significant main effect of emotion.

No significant interaction was observed between childhood trauma and depicted emotion, suggesting no differences in the impact of trauma across emotions.

In a model with childhood trauma and stimulation intensity as fixed factors, a significant main effect was found only for childhood trauma. Greater childhood trauma was associated with lower ERA. Notably, ERA was comparable for normal-intensity and strong-intensity stimulation.

After controlling for psychopathy and alexithymia, childhood trauma became less significant, but alexithymia remained significant. Consistently, the effects of childhood trauma did not differ by stimulus intensity.

conclusion

In summary, researchers investigated the association between childhood trauma and ERA using multiple modalities and varying stimulation intensities.

When examining stimulus intensity, modality, and emotion, only childhood trauma was significantly associated with ERA. Furthermore, when controlling for psychopathy and alexithymia, childhood trauma was only significant when exploring the emotions depicted.

Of note, effect sizes were overall small. Taken together, these results suggest the importance of controlling for interrelated individual differences.