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Advisor(s)
Abstract(s)
Past research has suggested that parents' ability to recognize their children's
emotions is associated with an enhanced quality of parent–child interactions and
appropriateness of parental caregiving behavior. Although this association has also
been examined in abusive and neglectful parents, the results are mixed and do not
adequately address child neglect. Based on the Social Information Processing model
of child abuse and neglect, we examined the association between mothers' ability to
recognize children's emotions and self‐ and professionals‐reported child abuse and
neglect. The ability to recognize children's emotions was assessed with an implicit
valence classification task and an emotion labeling task. A convenience sample of
166 mothers (78 with at least one child referred to Child Protection Services)
completed the tasks. Child abuse and neglect were measured with self‐report and
professionals‐report instruments. The moderating role of mothers' intellectual
functioning and socioeconomic status were also examined. Results revealed that
abusive mothers performed more poorly on the negative emotions recognition task,
while neglectful mothers demonstrated a lower overall ability in recognizing children's emotions. When classifying the valence of emotions, mothers who obtained
higher scores on child neglect presented a higher positivity bias particularly
when their scores in measures of intellectual functioning were low. There was no
moderation effect for socioeconomic status. Moreover, the results for child abuse
were mainly observed with self‐report measures, while for child neglect, they
predominantly emerged with professionals‐report. Our findings highlight the
important contribution of the social information processing model in the context of
child maltreatment, with implications for prevention and intervention addressed.
Description
Keywords
Attentional processes Child abuse and neglect Emotion recognition Maladaptive parenting
Pedagogical Context
Citation
Camilo, C., Vaz Garrido, M., & Calheiros, M. M. (2021). Recognizing children's emotions in child abuse and neglect. Aggressive Behavior, 47(2), 161-172. https://doi.org/10.1002/ab.21935