Study: Abused children stay highly
attuned to anger
by Paroma Basu
Wisconsin Week
University Communications
Posted: 9/14/2005
 Even
the subtlest hints of anger or hostility in their environment sets physically
abused children on prolonged "alert," even if a conflict has nothing to do with
them.
The tendency to stay attentive of nearby discord is probably a natural form of
self-preservation in children who routinely face aggression. But it may also
explain why abused children are often so distracted at school, write researchers
from UW-Madison, in the journal Child Development (September 14, 2005).
Led by Seth Pollak,
a professor of psychology, psychiatry and pediatrics, the UW-Madison team
tracked biological markers in 11 abused four and five-year olds who play a
computer game in one room when suddenly a clearly audible, heated argument
erupts between students next door.
Unbeknownst to the children, the "argument" - over an incomplete homework
assignment - was actually a scripted dialogue performed by two actors.
Both abused and non-abused children initially displayed signs of emotional
arousal, such as sweaty palms and decelerated heart rates, in reaction to the
angry voices in the next room. Heart rates often decelerate prior to a "fight or
flight" response, says Pollak, who is also a researcher at the UW-Madison
Waisman Center for Human Development.
But though heart rates of non-abused subjects soon rose back to normal levels,
heart rates in the abused group remained low. The abused children could not
completely break their attention away from the next-door argument, even when it
ended peacefully, Pollak says.
"What's really interesting about this experiment is that the abused children
were taking their attention resources and redeploying them into something that
had nothing to do with the children at all," says Pollak. "That provides an
important clue about why these children are having interpersonal problems."
The UW-Madison work builds on past experiments in which Pollak has aimed to
understand the developmental mechanisms that may lead abuse victims to adopt
unhealthy behaviors later in life, such as aggression, social anxiety and
addictions. "Several psychologists had put forward some very sophisticated
theories about the outcomes of child abuse but no one had offered any
brain-based cognitive models to explain why those outcomes occur," Pollak says.
Consequently, in 1999, Pollak showed that electrical brain activity spikes
dramatically when abused children view digital images of angry faces. That
result was not too surprising, he says. "Obviously, abused children's brains are
doing exactly what they should be doing - they are learning to cope with their
situation."
The latest work explores whether abused children react similarly to anger in
real life situations, or in this case, experimental simulations of the real
world. Pollak says the next step will be to discern exactly which neural systems
and brain regions are most affected after physical abuse. "Knowing this
specificity could help us figure out ways to eventually intervene in tailored
ways."
Other study co-authors included undergraduate student Shira Vardi (now a
UW-Madison graduate student in social work), psychology research specialist Anna
Bechner and assistant professor of psychology John Curtin.
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