Correlations among childhood trauma, autistic traits and dysexecutive functions in college students / 中国心理卫生杂志

ABSTRACT

Objective:To explore the relations among childhood trauma,autistic traits and dysexecutive functions in college students.Methods:Totally 2757 college students were assessed with the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire (CTQ).Sixty-three college students were randomly selected as the abused group according to the subscale cutoff point of CTQ Scale defined by Bernstein,and 93 students were randomly selected from students without history of childhood trauma as the control group.They were assessed with the Self-Rating Depression Scale (SDS),Autism Spectrum Quotient (AQ) and Dysexecutive Questionnaire (DEX) to measure depression,autistic traits and abnormality of executive functions,respectively.The individuals from the top and below 27％ of CTQ and AQ scores were defined as higher or lower-level different types of abused group and higher or lower-level autistic traits group,respectively.Results:The differences of DEX scores between higher or lower-level four types of CTQ (emotional abuse,physical abuse,sexual abuse,emotional neglect and physical neglect) and between higher or lower-level autistic traits group were significant (Ps ＜0.05).DEX scores in all higher-level groups were higher than all lower-level groups.Regression analysis showed that DEX score could be positively predicted by scores of emotional abuse,AQ and SDS (β =0.17-0.32,P ＜0.05).SDS score was a mediator between scores of emotional abuse and DEX,and between scores of autistic traits and DEX (95％ confidence interval were 0.05-0.32 and 0.07-0.55,respectively).Conclusion:Childhood trauma and autistic traits may positively predict dysexecutive function,and depression may play a mediating role between emotional abuse and dysexecutive function,and between autistic traits and dysexecutive function.