Klimek Magdalena, Karlsson Hasse, Karlsson Linnea, Korja Riikka, Nolvi Saara, Häikiö Tuomo, Tuulari Jetro J, Kataja Eeva-Leena
Department of Environmental Health, Faculty of Health Sciences, Institute of Public Health, Jagiellonian University Medical College, Krakow, Poland.
FinnBrain Birth Cohort Study, Turku Brain and Mind Center, Department of Clinical Medicine, University of Turku and Turku University Hospital, Turku, Finland.
PLoS One. 2025 Jul 3;20(7):e0326437. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0326437. eCollection 2025.
Paternal adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) have been recently linked to offspring's brain development. Yet, none of the previous studies in humans have explored the association between paternal ACEs and a child's attentional bias for facial expressions of emotion. Our study fills this gap. Data were collected from 239 fathers (mean age 32.15; SD 5.04) and their children at 8 months of age who were part of the FinnBrain Birth Cohort Study. Paternal ACEs were evaluated using the Trauma and Distress Scale (TADS) in five domains: emotional and physical neglect, emotional and physical abuse, and sexual abuse. In children, eye-tracking was used to study attentional engagement to emotional faces vs. non-faces and distractors, and to calculate face and fear bias indices. Hierarchical linear regression and the Mann-Whitney U test were used for analyses. A negative association between paternal sexual abuse and face bias was found in children (p = 0.043), when paternal postpartum anxiety and sex of the child were controlled, however the effect size was rather low. Additionally, daughters (n = 6) of sexually abused fathers expressed lower face bias (p = 0.02) and higher fear bias (p = 0.04) than daughters of sexually non-abused fathers. Our preliminary exploration suggests a potential intergenerational effect of paternal exposure to sexual abuse on the processing of facial expression among daughters at the age of 8 months, yet the results require further confirmatory analyses, especially in a larger study group of ACEs-exposed individuals.
父亲童年期不良经历（ACEs）最近被认为与后代的大脑发育有关。然而，之前在人类中的研究均未探讨父亲ACEs与儿童对情绪面部表情的注意偏向之间的关联。我们的研究填补了这一空白。数据来自芬兰大脑出生队列研究中的239名父亲（平均年龄32.15岁；标准差5.04）及其8个月大的孩子。使用创伤与痛苦量表（TADS）在五个领域评估父亲的ACEs：情感和身体忽视、情感和身体虐待以及性虐待。在儿童中，使用眼动追踪技术研究对情绪面孔与非面孔及干扰物的注意参与情况，并计算面孔和恐惧偏向指数。采用分层线性回归和曼-惠特尼U检验进行分析。在控制了父亲产后焦虑和孩子性别后，发现父亲性虐待与儿童的面孔偏向之间存在负相关（p = 0.043），然而效应量相当低。此外，遭受性虐待父亲的女儿（n = 6）比未遭受性虐待父亲的女儿表现出更低的面孔偏向（p = 0.02）和更高的恐惧偏向（p = 0.04）。我们的初步探索表明，父亲遭受性虐待可能对8个月大女儿的面部表情加工产生代际效应，但结果需要进一步的验证分析，尤其是在更大规模的ACEs暴露个体研究组中。
