Dept. of Experimental Clinical and Health Psychology, Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences, Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium.
Department of Personality, Psychological Assessment and Treatment, University of Deusto, Bilbao, Spain.
Eur Child Adolesc Psychiatry. 2021 Dec;30(12):1885-1894. doi: 10.1007/s00787-020-01656-8. Epub 2020 Oct 6.
The number of adolescent refugees around the world has been continuously increasing over the past few years trying to escape war and terror, among other things. Such experience not only increases the risk for mental health problems including anxiety, depression, and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), but also may have implications for socio-cognitive development. This study tested cognitive-affective processing in refugee adolescents who had escaped armed conflict in Syria and now resided in Istanbul, Turkey. Adolescents were split into a high trauma (n = 31, 12 girls, mean age = 11.70 years, SD = 1.15 years) and low trauma (n = 27, 14 girls, mean age = 11.07 years, SD = 1.39 years) symptom group using median split, and performed a working memory task with emotional distraction to assess cognitive control and a surprise faces task to assess emotional interpretation bias. The results indicated that high (vs. low) trauma symptom youth were ~ 20% worse correctly remembering the spatial location of a cue, although both groups performed at very low levels. However, this finding was not modulated by emotion. In addition, although all youths also had a ~ 20% bias toward interpreting ambiguous (surprise) faces as more negative, the high (vs. low) symptom youth were faster when allocating such a face to the positive (vs. negative) emotion category. The findings suggest the impact of war-related trauma on cognitive-affective processes essential to healthy development.
过去几年，全球范围内的青少年难民人数持续增加，他们试图逃离战争和恐怖等。这种经历不仅增加了焦虑、抑郁和创伤后应激障碍（PTSD）等心理健康问题的风险，还可能对社会认知发展产生影响。本研究测试了在土耳其伊斯坦布尔避难的逃离叙利亚武装冲突的难民青少年的认知情感加工。青少年被分为高创伤（n=31，12 名女孩，平均年龄=11.70 岁，SD=1.15 岁）和低创伤（n=27，14 名女孩，平均年龄=11.07 岁，SD=1.39 岁）症状组，使用中位数分割，并进行了一项带有情绪分心的工作记忆任务，以评估认知控制，以及一项惊讶面孔任务，以评估情绪解释偏差。结果表明，高（低）创伤症状青少年正确记住线索空间位置的能力差了约 20%，尽管两组的表现都非常低。然而，这种发现不受情绪的影响。此外，尽管所有青少年对模糊（惊讶）面孔的解释都有大约 20%的偏见，认为更消极，但高（低）症状青少年将这样的面孔分配到积极（消极）情绪类别时会更快。这些发现表明，与战争相关的创伤对健康发展至关重要的认知情感过程产生了影响。
