Exposure to childhood adversity and deficits in emotion recognition: results from a large, population-based sample

Dunn, Erin C; Crawford, Katherine M; Soare, Thomas W; Button, Katherine S; Raffeld, Mirian R; Smith, Andrew D A C; Penton-Voak, Ian S; Munaf�, Marcus R

Abstract

© 2018 Association for Child and Adolescent Mental Health. Background: Emotion recognition skills are essential for social communication. Deficits in these skills have been implicated in mental disorders. Prior studies of clinical and high-risk samples have consistently shown that children exposed to adversity are more likely than their unexposed peers to have emotion recognition skills deficits. However, only one population-based study has examined this association. Methods: We analyzed data from children participating in the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children, a prospective birth cohort (n=6,506). We examined the association between eight adversities, assessed repeatedly from birth to age 8 (caregiver physical or emotional abuse; sexual or physical abuse; maternal psychopathology; one adult in the household; family instability; financial stress; parent legal problems; neighborhood disadvantage) and the ability to recognize facial displays of emotion measured using the faces subtest of the Diagnostic Assessment of Non-Verbal Accuracy (DANVA) at age 8.5years. In addition to examining the role of exposure (vs. nonexposure) to each type of adversity, we also evaluated the role of the timing, duration, and recency of each adversity using a Least Angle Regression variable selection procedure. Results: Over three-quarters of the sample experienced at least one adversity. We found no evidence to support an association between emotion recognition deficits and previous exposure to adversity, either in terms of total lifetime exposure, timing, duration, or recency, or when stratifying by sex. Conclusions: Results from the largest population-based sample suggest that even extreme forms of adversity are unrelated to emotion recognition deficits as measured by the DANVA, suggesting the possible immutability of emotion recognition in the general population. These findings emphasize the importance of population-based studies to generate generalizable results.

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Jan 4, 2018
• Online Publication Date: Mar 7, 2018
• Publication Date: Aug 1, 2018
• Deposit Date: Mar 8, 2018
• Publicly Available Date: Mar 7, 2019
• Journal: Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry and Allied Disciplines
• Print ISSN: 0021-9630
• Electronic ISSN: 1469-7610
• Publisher: Wiley
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 59
• Issue: 8
• Pages: 845-854
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/jcpp.12881
• Keywords: sensitive periods, children, emotion recognition, ALSPAC, adversity
• Public URL: https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/862046
• Publisher URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/jcpp.12881
• Additional Information: Additional Information : This is the peer reviewed version of the following article: [Dunn, E. C., Crawford, K. M., Soare, T. W., Button, K. S., Raffeld, M. R., Smith, A. D., Penton-Voak, I. S. and Munafò, M. R. (2018) Exposure to childhood adversity and deficits in emotion recognition: Results from a large population-based sample. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry. ISSN 0021-9630], which has been published in final form at http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/jcpp.12881. This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance with Wiley Terms and Conditions for Self-Archiving.
• Contract Date: Mar 8, 2018