The Impact Of Childhood Psychological Maltreatment On Cognitive And Emotional Conflict

Purposes: The main object of this study is to investigate the experience of childhood psychological maltreatment on cognitive and emotional conflict processing.Methods: Cluster sampling was applied in this study while 565 college students were chosen.According to the Childhood Psychological Maltreatment Scale,then 30 students with psychological maltreatment and 33 students without psychological maltreatment were selected to take part in all experiments.Two experiments using the word-face stroop paradigm were conducted to assess cognitive and emotional conflict among college students who suffered psychological abuse in childhood.Experiment 1was a mixed experiment design of 2(subject type)×3(emotional face valence)×2(cognitive conflict type).Experiment 2 was a mixed experiment design of 2(subject type)×2(emotional face valence)×2(emotional conflict type).Results:(1)Experiment 1: Under the indicators of reaction time,the main effect of cognitive conflict type was extremely significant(F= 77.895,p<0.001),and the interaction between cognitive conflict type and emotional valence was significant(F=4.766,p=0.010).Under the indicators of accuracy,the main effect of cognitive conflict type was significant(F=8.504,p=0.005),and the interaction between the participants type,emotional valence and cognitive conflict type was significant(F=3.469,p=0.035),indicating that the accuracy rate of the psychological abuse group was significantly lower than that of the control group(F=4.118,p=0.047).(2)Experiment 2: Under the indicators of reaction time,the main effect of conflict type was significant(F=4.721,p=0.034).The main effect of emotional valence was significant(F=104.086,p<0.001).The interaction effect between conflict type and emotional valence was significant(F=189.532,p ? 0.001).Under the indicators of accuracy,the main effect of emotional valence was significant(F=21.076,p<0.001).The interaction effect between conflict type and emotional valence was significant(F=54.930,p?0.001).The interaction effect among group,conflict type and emotional valence was significant(F=6.898,p=0.011).In inconsistent judgments on negative valence,the accuracy of the psychological maltreatment group wassignificantly higher than that of the control group(F=5.214,p=0.026).Conclusion: Childhood psychological maltreatment experience can affect the processing of cognitive conflict and emotional conflict,which is mainly reflected in the accuracy.The negative emotional stimulation has different effects on cognitive conflict processing and emotional conflict processing in college students who experienced psychological maltreatment in childhood.The experience of psychological maltreatment in childhood lead to negative emotions hinder with the processing of cognitive conflict.The experience of psychological maltreatment in childhood leads to negative emotions to promote the processing of emotional conflict.