Iffland Benjamin, Neuner Frank
Department of Psychology, Bielefeld University, Bielefeld, Germany.
Front Psychol. 2022 Mar 4;13:784147. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.784147. eCollection 2022.
Different types of maltreatment (emotional, physical, and sexual) lead to distortions in emotion and attention processing. The present study investigated whether the experience of peer victimization in childhood and adolescence has an additional influence on attention processing in adulthood.
Two non-clinical samples consisting of individuals with different levels of experiences of maltreatment were recruited. In an evaluative conditioning task, images of faces with neutral emotional expression were either associated with short videos of intense negative statements, or associated with neutral videos. Subsequently, these faces were used as stimuli in an emotional Stroop task as well as a dot-probe task.
In both tasks, hierarchical regression analyses revealed that retrospective reports of relational peer victimization made an incremental contribution to the prediction of attentional biases beyond child maltreatment. In the emotional Stroop task, emotional abuse was the strongest predictor for an attentional bias showing delayed responses to negatively associated faces, while peer victimization was associated with faster responses to negatively associated faces. In the dot-probe task, relational peer victimization was the strongest predictor for an attentional bias. When the attentional bias was examined in more detail, though, peer victimization did not show incremental contributions although emotional abuse remained the strongest predictor for facilitated attention toward negatively associated neutral faces.
Experiences of peer victimization leave additional cognitive scars beyond effects of childhood maltreatment by caregivers. It is likely that attentional biases in the aftermath of victimization put individuals at risk for the development of psychopathology.
不同类型的虐待（情感、身体和性虐待）会导致情绪和注意力处理出现扭曲。本研究调查了童年和青少年时期同伴受害经历是否会对成年后的注意力处理产生额外影响。
招募了两个非临床样本，样本中的个体具有不同程度的虐待经历。在一个评价性条件反射任务中，中性表情的面部图像要么与强烈负面陈述的短视频相关联，要么与中性短视频相关联。随后，这些面部被用作情绪斯特鲁普任务和点探测任务中的刺激物。
在这两个任务中，层次回归分析表明，同伴关系受害的回顾性报告对注意力偏差预测的贡献超过了儿童期虐待。在情绪斯特鲁普任务中，情感虐待是注意力偏差的最强预测因素，表现为对负相关面部的反应延迟，而同伴受害与对负相关面部的更快反应相关。在点探测任务中，同伴关系受害是注意力偏差的最强预测因素。然而，当更详细地检查注意力偏差时，同伴受害并没有显示出额外的贡献，尽管情感虐待仍然是促进对负相关中性面部注意力的最强预测因素。
同伴受害经历除了会造成照顾者童年虐待带来的影响外，还会留下额外的认知创伤。受害后的注意力偏差很可能使个体面临精神病理学发展的风险。
