Ingabire Marie Chantal, Caparos Serge, Rutembesa Eugène, Habimana Emmanuel, Blanchette Isabelle
Departement de Psychologie, Universite du Quebec a Trois-Rivieres.
Departement de Psychologie, Universite Paris 8.
Psychol Trauma. 2024 Oct 17. doi: 10.1037/tra0001807.
This study aimed to examine whether mothers' level of trauma exposure and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms are related to their offspring's cognitive functioning.
Mothers exposed to the 1994 genocide perpetrated against the Tutsi ( = 181) and one of their adult offspring were recruited in Rwanda. Mothers and their offspring answered questionnaires on sociodemographic information, the level of trauma exposure, and PTSD symptoms. They also performed a backward digit span task and a similarity task to assess their working memory and abstract reasoning, respectively. Hierarchical regression models were used to analyze the data.
Mothers' level of trauma exposure, but not PTSD symptoms, was significantly related to their offspring's abstract reasoning performance after controlling for offspring's age, sex, and economic status. The relationship between mothers' level of trauma exposure, PTSD symptoms, and their offspring's working memory performance was not significant. Offspring's education was significantly linked to their working memory and abstract reasoning performance.
The findings demonstrate that the intergenerational transmission of trauma can impact the cognitive functioning of the next generation. These results also illustrate the profound and long-term human impact of mass violence. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).
本研究旨在探讨母亲的创伤暴露水平和创伤后应激障碍（PTSD）症状是否与其后代的认知功能有关。
在卢旺达招募了181名经历过1994年针对图西族的种族灭绝事件的母亲及其一名成年后代。母亲及其后代回答了关于社会人口学信息、创伤暴露水平和PTSD症状的问卷。他们还分别进行了倒背数字广度任务和相似性任务，以评估其工作记忆和抽象推理能力。采用分层回归模型对数据进行分析。
在控制了后代的年龄、性别和经济状况后，母亲的创伤暴露水平与其后代的抽象推理表现显著相关，而PTSD症状则不然。母亲的创伤暴露水平、PTSD症状与其后代的工作记忆表现之间的关系不显著。后代的教育程度与其工作记忆和抽象推理表现显著相关。
研究结果表明，创伤的代际传递会影响下一代的认知功能。这些结果还说明了大规模暴力对人类产生的深远和长期影响。（PsycInfo数据库记录（c）2024美国心理学会，保留所有权利）
