NCJ Number
236366
Journal
Child Abuse & Neglect Volume: 35 Issue: 9 Dated: September 2011 Pages: 712-721
Date Published
September 2011
Length
10 pages
Annotation
This study determined whether parents at high risk for physical child abuse, compared to parents at low risk, had deficits in emotion recognition, and it examined the moderator effect of gender and stress on the relationship between risk for physical child abuse and emotion recognition.
Abstract
Based on their scores on the Abuse Scale of the Child Abuse Potential Inventory (CAP), the study found that parents at high risk for physical child abuse, compared to parents at low risk, showed deficits in emotion recognition; however, differences between high-risk and low-risk participants were found only for fathers, but not for mothers; whereas, fathers at high risk for physical child abuse made more errors than mothers at high risk, no differences were found between mothers at low risk and fathers at low risk for physical child abuse. No interaction was observed between stress, gender, and risk status for errors in emotion recognition. If confirmed by additional research, these findings could be helpful in further understanding of deficits in processing information by physically abusive parents and in developing treatment strategies that focus on emotion recognition. If gender differences are confirmed, these findings could be helpful in developing treatment programs specifically for abusive fathers. Based on their responses to the CAP Abuse Scale, 64 parents at high risk for physical child abuse (24 fathers and 40 mothers) and 80 parents at low risk for physical child abuse (40 fathers and 40 mothers) were selected for the study. The Subtle Expression Training Tool/Micro Expression Training Tool (Ekman, 2004a, 2004b) and the Diagnostic Analysis of Nonverbal Accuracy II (Nowicki and Carton, 1993) were used to assess emotion recognition. 3 tables, 3 figures, and 47 references