Abused Children Experience High Anger Exposure.

Childhood maltreatment is a critical problem in the United States. Much attention has been paid to the negative outcomes suffered by victims of abuse. Less attention has been devoted to understanding the emotional environments of maltreated children. One assumption, which has stood without empirical test, is that abused children encounter a high degree of anger in their home environments. Anger exposure is thought to be a source of stress for children in abusive environments and a potential link between the experience of abuse and the development of health and behavioral problems. We tested this notion by assessing data on over 1,000 parents and guardians of 3- to 17-year-old children who were participants in child development studies. Abuse was measured via records from Child Protective Services regarding substantiated and unsubstantiated claims of abuse as well as parent/guardian report. We compared self-reported experiences of anger from parents/guardians of children who have experienced abuse with those who have not. We found support for the claim that caregivers of abused children experience and express high levels of anger. Better characterization of the emotional environments in which abused children develop is critical for understanding how and why abuse affects children and has important implications for informing interventions.

Physically abused children's regulation of attention in response to hostility.

The present study examines the effects of early emotional experiences on children's regulation or strategic control of attention in the presence of interpersonal hostility. Abused children's reactions to the unfolding of a realistic interpersonal emotional situation were measured through multiple methods including autonomic nervous system changes and overt behavioral performance. Although physically abused and non-physically abused 4-year-old children did not differ in terms of their baseline levels of arousal, marked differences in physically abused children's regulatory responses to background anger emerged. These data suggest that the emergence of anger leads to increases in anticipatory monitoring of the environment among children with histories of abuse. Results are discussed in terms of risk factors in the development of psychopathology.