The Effects of Child Maltreatment on Fixation Patterns and Emotion Recognition

Child maltreatment is a pervasive problem that affects thousands of children each year. Several studies have found links between child maltreatment and impaired cognitive functioning in children and young adults. To this date, there has been no research on how child maltreatment affects fixation patterns in regards to negative and positive stimuli. The purpose of this study was to investigate emotion recognition and fixation patterns in young adults with a history of child maltreatment. Participants included 49 undergraduate students recruited through SONA. Participants completed the SLESQ and the CTQ to assess for trauma and maltreatment. Participants partook in an eye-tracking task where they were presented with varying facial stimuli and instructed to label the expression. Results indicated that child maltreatment did not affect emotion labeling accuracy, nor did it affect how and where participants fixated on particular facial features. These results suggest that child abuse does not affect attentional biases toward particular facial features, and thus does not affect emotion recognition in young adults.