Firoozi M, Besharat M A, Pournaghash Tehrani S
Department of Psychology, Tehran University, Tehran, Iran.
Iran J Cancer Prev. 2011 Fall;4(4):183-8.
Childhood cancer, as one of the life threatening and most serious health problems, considerably influences the cognitive and social functions of children with cancer and their families; however, surprisingly enough, these children are quite compatible with their peers and even function better emotionally compared with normal children. This matter still remains to be a mystery.
In this study, the ability of ignoring negative stimuli as a technique of emotion regulation was investigated in children with cancer. For this purpose, 78 children (33 girls and 45 boys aged 3 to 12 years) with pediatric acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL), and 89 healthy children (52 girls and 37 boys aged3 to 12 years) participated in this study. At the first stage, a number of positive,negative and neutral pictures were displayed to children. At the second stage, they were asked to identify the pictures from among a collection.
Data analysis by MANOVA indicated that children with cancer, compared with healthy children, could recognize more positive images than negative ones. Furthermore, it was found that age, sex, duration of hospital stay, duration of disease and financial situation had an effect on the difference between the two groups.
Positive bias memory can explain low depression and lack of symptoms of post traumatic stress disorder in children with ALL. Attention shifting is multifactorial phenomenon and neurologic factors and family support play important role in this happening.
儿童癌症作为危及生命且最严重的健康问题之一，对患癌儿童及其家庭的认知和社会功能有重大影响；然而，令人惊讶的是，这些儿童与同龄人相处融洽，甚至在情绪方面比正常儿童表现更好。这一现象仍是个谜。
在本研究中，对患癌儿童作为情绪调节技术的忽略负面刺激的能力进行了调查。为此，78名患有小儿急性淋巴细胞白血病（ALL）的儿童（33名女孩和45名男孩，年龄3至12岁）以及89名健康儿童（52名女孩和37名男孩，年龄3至12岁）参与了本研究。在第一阶段，向儿童展示了一些正面、负面和中性的图片。在第二阶段，要求他们从一组图片中识别出之前展示过的图片。
多变量方差分析的数据分析表明，与健康儿童相比，患癌儿童能识别出更多的正面图像而非负面图像。此外，还发现年龄、性别、住院时间、疾病持续时间和经济状况对两组之间的差异有影响。
积极偏向记忆可以解释ALL儿童抑郁症发病率低和缺乏创伤后应激障碍症状的原因。注意力转移是一个多因素现象，神经因素和家庭支持在这一现象中起重要作用。
