Child Abuse and Neglect How

Child Abuse and Neglect

How the Aspect of Maltreatment Affects Children in the following areas:

School Performance: A study undertaken by Eckenrode, Laird and Doris in 1993 investigated the relationship of child abuse and neglect to academic achievement and discipline problems in a school-age population. A representative community sample of 420 maltreated children in kindergarten through Grade 12 were matched with 420 non-maltreated children in the same community (Eckenrode, Laird & Doris, 1993, p. 53). Of the 420 maltreated children 216 were neglected, 52 were sexually abused only, 49 were physically abused only, 38 were both physically abused and neglected, and 56 were both sexually abused and neglected (Eckenrode, Laird & Doris, 1993, p. 55). Using social service and school records as the sources of data, the study had the following results: Maltreated children scored significantly below their non-maltreated peers in standardized tests in reading/English and math and grades and were more likely to repeat a grade in school, independent of the effects of public assistance status, age or gender (Eckenrode, Laird & Doris, 1993, p. 56f.). There were significant differences in academic effects of different types of maltreatment suggesting that child maltreatment is not a uni-dimensional construct. Neglect occurring alone or in combination with abuse was associated with the lowest level of academic achievement among maltreated children and neglect appeared to have had a more substantial influence on these outcomes than abuse. Physically abused children (alone) showed the greatest prevalence of both discipline referrals and suspensions. Sexually abused children, on the other hand, were similar to non-maltreated children in academic achievement and discipline problems. Maltreated children also had significantly more discipline referrals and suspensions. Of the maltreated children, neglected children showed the poorest outcomes on academic performance, and physically abused children showed the most discipline problems (Eckenrode, Laird & Doris, 1993, p. 59f.). Emotional Development: Pollak et al. In a 2000 research study assessed the recognition of emotion among physically abused and physically neglected preschoolers in order to examine the effects of atypical experience on emotional development (p. 679). Participants were 16 physically neglected, 17 physically abused, and 15 non-maltreated children, ranging in age from 3 years 3 months to 5 years 6 months (p. 680). Experiment 1 examined children's ability to match a facial display with an emotional context. Physically neglected children accurately recognized emotions less frequently than did non-maltreated or physically abused children, even after the researchers statistically controlled for receptive language. More specifically, neglected children had more difficulty discriminating differences between emotional expressions. Nevertheless, their accuracy in recognizing anger did not differ from that of non-maltreated children. Signal detection analysis revealed that physically abused children used a more liberal bias for selecting angry faces, whereas neglected children used a more liberal bias in selecting sad faces. The findings from Experiment 2 indicate that maltreated children's lower recognition accuracy is not secondary to an impairment of their ability to detect physical differences between facial expressions. Rather, maltreatment seems to affect children's understanding of particular emotional displays (p. 684). Relationship with Peers and Parents: A study conducted by Burack et al. In 2007 assessed the ability of maltreated school-age children and adolescents to understand the thoughts, feelings, and points-of-view of others. Level of egocentrism and social perspective-taking coordination were assessed in a group of 49 chronically maltreated and 49 demographically matched non-maltreated children. The findings revealed that despite opportunities for monitored peer interactions and contact with supportive adult models in therapeutic group home settings and in treatment programs, maltreated children and adolescents were more egocentric and delayed in their social perspective-taking development than their non-maltreated peers and that they reported lower levels of global self-worth. However, one potentially positive finding was that low levels of externalizing and internalizing behaviors among the maltreated children were associated with better interpersonal negotiation strategies with unfamiliar peers indicating that the effects of maltreatment are not necessarily globally deleterious with respect to social perspective-taking skills (see Burack et al., 2006, p. 214). According to this study, maltreating parents may pose a particular threat to their children's development of age-appropriate perspective-taking skills. The family environment of almost all maltreated children lacks the elements of support, affection, empathic modeling, and inductive child-rearing techniques that are identified as important variables in the development of the capacity for understanding the feelings and perspectives of others and a coherent sense of self. Because parents who rear their children in unresponsive or violent environments fail to foster communicative exchanges, opportunities to form emotional attachments with alternative parental figures and peers are also limited, as maltreating parents tend to isolate their families from others in the community and deprive their children of opportunities for interaction. Accordingly, maltreated children often form insecure, conflicted relationships with primary caregivers and are at risk for delays in the development of age-appropriate, self-other differentiation (Burack et al., 2006, p. 208).