Self-related Processing In Adult Survivors Of Childhood Psychological Maltreatment

We undertook experiments to investigate whether childhood psychological maltreatment influences self-information processing and how emotional information affects the ability of the information process to reveal one’s self-development status.The current study used the Child Psychological Maltreatment Scale(CPMS)to screen participants.Thirty participants reporting histories of psychological maltreatment in childhood(experimental group)and thirty participants who did not report such histories(control group)were recruited for Experiments 1 and 2,respectively.A perceptual matching paradigm was utilized to assess the characteristics of self-related processing.This paradigm can overcome fundamental methodological problems in prior work by using self-names and-faces and providing a strong quantitative means to understand the self-integration function and its dysfunction.In Experiment 1,participants were asked to connect abstract geometric shapes to indicate either themselves(‘you’),or familiar other(‘friend’)or an unfamiliar other(‘stranger’).The task was to judge whether the sequential shape/label pairs matched or did not match.The main purpose of Experiment1 was to examine whether the inclusion of abstract geometry into the self-system demonstrated a robust advantage of self-related processing.In Experiment 2,negative,neutral and positive emotional stimuli were embedded in the social-connection graph to explore whether the self-related processing of individuals is modulated by emotional information.It was then examined the self-integration function.The results of Experiment 1 showed that the response rate(RT/ACC)of self-related information judgements among the experimental and control groups was significantly faster than those of the friend.Compared with the control group,the processing advantages of the friend in the experimental group were enhanced.In Experiment 2,the response rate of self-related information judgements in the experimental group was significantly faster than that of the friend under a negative emotional condition.There was no significant difference between positive and neutral conditions.In the control group,the response rate of self-related information judgements in the experimental group was significantly faster than that of the friend under both negative and positive emotional conditions.In conclusion,through self-related information processing,individuals with or without histories of childhood psychological maltreatment had significant advantages of self-related processing.The self-integration function of psychologically-abused individuals is not stable.Negative emotions maintain the self-processing ability,while positive emotions weaken it.Moreover,there is an advantage of enhanced friend-related processing that is more likely to automatically associate friends with positive emotions.For individuals who are not psychologically abused,the self-integration function is stable and not easily disturbed by emotional information.The research verifies the constructivist self-development theory(CSDT),indicating that psychological maltreatment mainly thwarts the development of a self-benign positive appraisal.