Effects Of Childhood Psychological Abuse On The Categorical Perception Processing Of Ambiguous Emotional Facial Expressions:the Role Of Attachment

Purposes: To investigate the categorical perception of ambiguous emotional facial expressions in childhood psychological abused individuals,and to determine whether differences in emotional face perception between psychologically abused and normal subjects are due to perception bias or sensitivity.It also focuses on the role of parental attachment in the relationship between psychological abuse and categorical perception of facial expressions,and the intervention effects of attachment security priming.Methods:(1)Cluster sampling was used in this study,while 1600 college students were selected from two universities in Harbin.The Child Psychological Maltreatment Scale(CPMS)was used to screen participants.(2)31 participants who reported a history of childhood psychological abuse and another 31 participants who reported no such history were selected to complete the experiments.(3)Experiment 1: Using the facial expression category perceptual paradigm,a mixed experimental design of 2(subject type: psychological abused group,non-psychological abused group)× 3(expression type: happy-angry,happy-fearful,happy-disgust)was used to study the perceptual biases and perceptual sensitivity of subjects.(4)Experiment 2: Subjects completed the Inventory of Parent and Peer Attachment Scale(IPPA)to examine the role of parental attachment as a mediating variable in childhood psychological abuse and categorical perception of emotional faces.(5)Experiment 3: Adding a priming task in the paradigm.A three-factor mixed experimental design of 2(subject type:psychological abused group,non-psychological abused group)× 2(priming type:attachment security priming,neutral priming)× 3(expression type: happy-angry,happy-fearful,happy-disgust)were used to investigate the effect of attachment security priming on the category perceptual processing of ambiguous emotional faces in psychological abused individuals.Results:(1)In Experiment 1,psychologically abused subjects had a negative perceptual bias of ambiguous emotional faces.Compared to the non-psychological abused group,the category boundaries in the psychological abused subjects were significantly shifted toward the side of the positive expression,representing a perceptual bias for negative expressions;however,the differences in the slope of the curve at the category boundary were not significant,indicating that there were no between-group differences in perceptual sensitivity.(2)Experiment 2 demonstrated the mediation role of parental attachment in the relationship between psychological abuse and facial category perceptual bias.Psychological abuse experiences predicted insecure paternal attachment relationships,which in turn influenced individuals’ negative perceptual biases towards ambiguous emotional faces.(3)Experiment 3 confirmed that attachment security priming was effective in improving the negative perceptual bias of ambiguous emotional faces in psychological abused individuals.With the exclusion of covariate,the category boundary was significantly higher for security-priming abused subjects than pre-priming and also significantly higher than the neutral-priming abused subjects,indicating that attachment security priming can effectively improve the negative perceptual biases in psychological abused individuals.Conclusions:(1)All subjects exhibited category perception effects for emotional face processing.Compared with non-psychological abusers,the abused individuals showed negative perceptual biases for ambiguous emotional faces.(2)Attachment could be the mechanism influencing emotional face recognition in childhood psychological abusers,and parental attachment mediates the relationship between childhood psychological maltreatment and category perceptual biases of ambiguous emotional faces.(3)Attachment security priming can effectively improve the negative perceptual bias of ambiguous emotional faces in childhood psychological abusers.