Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-s2hrs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-07T08:35:31.713Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Effects of early institutionalization on emotion processing in 12-year-old youth

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 November 2017

Johanna Bick ,
Rhiannon Luyster ,
Nathan A. Fox ,
Charles H. Zeanah  and
Charles A. Nelson
Johanna Bick
Affiliation:
University of Houston
Rhiannon Luyster
Affiliation:
Emerson College
Nathan A. Fox
Affiliation:
University of Maryland
Charles H. Zeanah
Affiliation:
Tulane University
Charles A. Nelson*
Affiliation:
Boston Children's Hospital Harvard Medical School Harvard Graduate School of Education
*
Address correspondence and reprint requests to: Charles A. Nelson III, Boston Children's Hospital/Harvard Medical School, 1 Autumn Street, Boston, MA 02115; E-mail: [email protected].
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

We examined facial emotion recognition in 12-year-olds in a longitudinally followed sample of children with and without exposure to early life psychosocial deprivation (institutional care). Half of the institutionally reared children were randomized into foster care homes during the first years of life. Facial emotion recognition was examined in a behavioral task using morphed images. This same task had been administered when children were 8 years old. Neutral facial expressions were morphed with happy, sad, angry, and fearful emotional facial expressions, and children were asked to identify the emotion of each face, which varied in intensity. Consistent with our previous report, we show that some areas of emotion processing, involving the recognition of happy and fearful faces, are affected by early deprivation, whereas other areas, involving the recognition of sad and angry faces, appear to be unaffected. We also show that early intervention can have a lasting positive impact, normalizing developmental trajectories of processing negative emotions (fear) into the late childhood/preadolescent period.

Type
Special Issue Articles
Information
Development and Psychopathology , Volume 29 , Special Issue 5: Biological and Behavioral Effects of Early Adversity on Multiple Levels of Development , December 2017 , pp. 1749 - 1761
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2017 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

Preparation of this manuscript was supported by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Binder Family Foundation, the Help the Children of Romania, Inc. Foundation, and NIMH Grant MH 091363 (to C.A.N.).

References

Adolphs, R., Sears, L., & Piven, J. (2001). Abnormal processing of social information from faces in autism. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 13, 232–240. doi:10.1162/089892901564289 CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Berens, A. E., & Nelson, C. A. (2015). The science of early adversity: Is there a role for large institutions in the care of vulnerable children? Lancet, 386, 388–398.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Camras, L. A. (1980). Children's understanding of facial expressions used during conflict encounters. Child Development, 879–885.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Camras, L. A., & Allison, K. (1985). Children's understanding of emotional facial expressions and verbal labels. Journal of Nonverbal Behavior, 9, 84–94.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Caron, A. J., Caron, R. F., & Maclean, D. J. (1988). Infant discrimination of naturalistic emotional expressions: The role of face and voice. Child Development, 59, 604–616. doi:10.2307/1130560 CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Cicchetti, D., & Curtis, W. J. (2005). An event-related potential study of the processing of affective facial expressions in young children who experienced maltreatment during the first year of life. Development and Psychopathology, 17, 641–677 doi:10.1017/s0954579405050315 CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Curtis, W. J., & Cicchetti, D. (2011). Affective facial expression processing in young children who have experienced maltreatment during the first year of life: An event-related potential study. Development and Psychopathology, 23, 373–395 doi:10.1017/S0954579411000125 CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
De Sonneville, L., Verschoor, C., Njiokiktjien, C., Op Het Veld, V., Toorenaaar, N., & Vranken, M. (2002). Facial identity and facial emotions: Speed, accuracy, and processing strategies in children and adults. Journal of Clinical and Experimental Neuropsychology, 24, 200–213.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Eckman, P., & Friesen, W. V. (1976). Pictures of facial affect. Palo Alto, CA: Consulting Psychologists Press.Google Scholar
Fries, A. B., & Pollak, S. D. (2004). Emotion understanding in postinstitutionalized Eastern European children. Development and Psychopathology, 16, 355–369.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Gao, X., & Maurer, D. (2009). Influence of intensity on children's sensitivity to happy, sad, and fearful facial expressions. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 102, 503–521.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Gross, A. L., & Ballif, B. (1991). Children's understanding of emotion from facial expressions and situations: A review. Developmental Review, 11, 368–398.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Guyer, A. E., Mcclure, E. B., Adler, A. D., Brotman, M. A., Rich, B. A., Kimes, A. S., … Leibenluft, E. (2007). Specificity of facial expression labeling deficits in childhood psychopathology. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry and Allied Disciplines, 48, 863–871. doi:10.1111/j.1469-7610.2007.01758.x CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Harrigan, J. A. (1984). The effects of task order on children's identification of facial expressions. Motivation and Emotion, 8, 157–169.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Herba, C. M., Landau, S., Russell, T., Ecker, C., & Phillips, M. L. (2006). The development of emotion-processing in children: Effects of age, emotion, and intensity. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 47, 1098–1106. doi:10.1111/j.1469-7610.2006.01652.x CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Izard, C. E. (1994). Innate and universal facial expressions: Evidence from developmental and cross-cultural research. Psychological Bulletin, 115, 288–299.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Jeon, H., Moulson, M. C., Fox, N., Zeanah, C., & Nelson, C. A. (2010). The effects of early institutionalization on the discrimination of facial expressions of emotion in young children. Infancy, 15, 209–221.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Leppänen, J. M., & Nelson, C. A. (2009). Tuning the developing brain to social signals of emotions. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 10, 37–47.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Leppänen, J. M., & Nelson, C. A. (2012). Early development of fear processing. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 21, 200–204. doi:10.1177/0963721411435841 CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Maclean, K. (2003). The impact of institutionalization on child development. Development and Psychopathology, 15, 853–884.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Mancini, G., Agnoli, S., Baldaro, B., Ricci, P. E., Surcinelli, P. (2013). Facial expressions of emotions: Recognition accuracy and affective reactions during late childhood. Journal of Psychology, 147, 599–617.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Monk, C. S., Mcclure, E. B., Nelson, E. E., Zarahn, E., Bilder, R. M., Leibenluft, E., … Pine, D. S. (2003). Adolescent immaturity in attention-related brain engagement to emotional facial expressions. NeuroImage, 20, 420–428.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Moulson, M. C., Fox, N. A., Zeanah, C. H., & Nelson, C. A. (2009). Early adverse experiences and the neurobiology of facial emotion processing. Developmental Psychology, 45, 17–30. doi:10.1037/a0014035 CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Moulson, M. C., Shutts, K., Fox, N. A., Zeanah, C. H., Spelke, E. S., & Nelson, C. A. (2015). Effects of early institutionalization on the development of emotion processing: A case for relative sparing? Developmental Science, 18, 298–313.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Moulson, M. C., Westerlund, A., Fox, N. A., Zeanah, C. H., & Nelson, C. A. (2009). The effects of early experience on face recognition: An event-related potential study of institutionalized children in Romania. Child Development, 80, 1039–1056. doi:10.1111/j.1467-8624.2009.01315.x CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Nelson, C. A. (1987). The recognition of facial expressions in the first two years of life: Mechanisms of development. Child Development, 58, 889–909.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Nelson, C. A. (2001). The development and neural bases of face recognition. Infant and Child Development, 10, 3–18. doi:10.1002/icd.239 CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nelson, C. A., Fox, N. A., & Zeanah, C. H. (2014). Romania's abandoned children: Deprivation, brain development and the struggle for recovery. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nelson, C. A., Parker, S. W., Guthrie, D., & BEIP Core Group. (2006). The discrimination of facial expressions by typically developing infants and toddlers and those experiencing early institutional care. Infant Behavior and Development, 29, 210–219.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Nelson, C. A., Westerlund, A., McDermott, J. M., Zeanah, C. H., & Fox, N. A. (2013). Emotion recognition following early psychosocial deprivation. Development and Psychopathology, 25, 517–525. doi:10.1017/s0954579412001216 CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Odom, R. D., & Lemond, C. M. (1972). Developmental differences in the perception and production of facial expressions. Child Development, 359–369.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Parker, S. W., & Nelson, C. A. (2005). An event-related potential study of the impact of institutional rearing on face recognition. Development and Psychopathology, 17, 621–639. doi:10.1017/s0954579405050303 CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Pollak, S. D., Cicchetti, D., Hornung, K., & Reed, A. (2000). Recognizing emotion in faces: Developmental effects of child abuse and neglect. Developmental Psychology, 36, 679–688.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Pollak, S. D., & Kistler, D. J. (2002). Early experience is associated with the development of categorical representations for facial expressions of emotion. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 99, 9072–9076. doi:10.1073/pnas.142165999 CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Pollak, S. D., Klorman, R., Thatcher, J. E., & Cicchetti, D. (2001). P3b reflects maltreated children's reactions to facial displays of emotion. Psychophysiology, 38, 267–274.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Pollak, S. D., & Sinha, P. (2002). Effects of early experience on children's recognition of facial displays of emotion. Developmental Psychology, 38, 784–791. doi:10.1037/0012-1649.38.5.784 CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Pollak, S. D., & Tolley-Schell, S. A. (2003). Selective attention to facial emotion in physically abused children. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 112, 323–338. doi:10.1037/0021-843x.112.3.323 CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Pollak, S. D., Vardi, S., Putzer Bechner, A. M., & Curtin, J. J. (2005). Physically abused children's regulation of attention in response to hostility. Child Development, 76, 968–977.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Serrano, J. M., Iglesias, J., & Loeches, A. (1992). Visual discrimination and recognition of facial expressions of anger, fear, and surprise in 4 to 6 month old infants. Developmental Psychobiology, 25, 411–425.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shackman, J. E., Shackman, A. J., & Pollak, S. D. (2007). Physical abuse amplifies attention to threat and increases anxiety in children. Emotion, 7, 838–852. doi:10.1037/1528-3542.7.4.838 CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Thomas, L. A., Debellis, M. D., Graham, R., & Labar, K. S. (2007). Development of emotional facial recognition in late childhood and adolescence. Developmental Science, 10, 547–558. doi:10.1111/j.1467-7687.2007.00614.x CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Tottenham, N., Tanaka, J. W., Leon, A. C., McCarry, T., Nurse, M., Hare, T. A., … Nelson, C. A. (2009). The NimStim set of facial expressions: Judgments from untrained research participants. Psychiatry Research, 168, 242–249.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Tremblay, C., Kirouac, G., & Dore, F. Y. (1987). The recognition of adults' and children's facial expressions of emotions. Journal of Psychology, 121, 341–350.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Widen, S. C., & Russell, J. A. (2004). The relative power of an emotion's facial expression, label, and behavioral consequence to evoke preschoolers’ knowledge of its cause. Cognitive Development, 19, 111–125.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zeanah, C. H., Nelson, C. A., Fox, N. A., Smyke, A. T., Marshall, P., Parker, S. W., & Koga, S. (2003). Designing research to study the effects of institutionalization on brain and behavioral development: The Bucharest Early Intervention Project. Development and Psychopathology, 15, 885–907. doi:10.1017/s0954579403000452 CrossRefGoogle Scholar