It’s a two-way street: Automatic and controlled processes in children’s emotional responses to moral transgressions

Rejecting ingroup loyalty for the truth: Children's and adolescents' evaluations of deviant peers within a misinformation intergroup context

Typically, children and adolescents dislike peers who deviate from their peer group's norm, preferring normative peers who are loyal to the peer ingroup. Yet children and adolescents also consider whether the behavior displayed by a deviant peer aligns with generic societally valued norms when evaluating peers within intergroup contexts. In an age where misinformation is rampant online, seeking the truth exemplifies a generic norm that is widely valued but not always upheld given that individuals often show loyalty to the ingroup. The current research explored the conflict between ingroup loyalty and seeking the truth. In this study, participants (N = 266; 8-15 years old) read about their school participating in an inter-school competition where their ingroup peer either accidentally or deliberately shared misinformation about their outgroup competitor. Participants with a peer group norm of ingroup loyalty positively morally evaluated a norm deviant seeking the truth, whereas those with a peer group norm of seeking the truth negatively morally evaluated a norm deviant showing ingroup loyalty. Participants also took into account the intentions of the misinformer in their evaluations of a deviant who was either loyal or questioning toward the misinformer. Overall, this study suggests that the norm of truth-seeking is welcomed and regarded as an important value to uphold both generically and at a peer group level, even when it violates the norm of ingroup loyalty. This research provides a novel contribution to understanding how factors like norms and intentionality interact with children's and adolescents' navigation of information in an age of misinformation.

"Many bad things had been happening to me": Children's perceptions and experiences of polyvictimization in the context of child physical abuse

BACKGROUND

The association between child maltreatment and polyvictimization has received growing attention since being identified by Finkelhor and colleagues in 2005.

OBJECTIVE

The current study was designed to explore the experiences and perceptions of children who reported polyvictimization during forensic interviews.

METHODS

This mixed-methods study sample comprised 117 children aged 5-14, referred for the first time to forensic interviews following suspected physical abuse by a parent. More than one-third of the children reported polyvictimization. A thematic analysis was carried out to spotlight these children's experiences.

RESULTS

The analysis identified three main themes: the way children comprehend the polyvictimization, the consequences of the polyvictimization regarding the children's negative self-attribution, and the way the polyvictimization was constructed through the dynamic with the forensic interviewers.

CONCLUSIONS

The findings pointed to the importance of the forensic interview platform in assessing children's maltreatment burden. The current study also provided a glance into the possible involvement of the mechanics of self-blame among maltreated children. These findings have the potential to enhance our understanding of the excessive psychological toll taken on polyvictimized children.

Children's sympathy moderates the link between their attentional orientation and ethical guilt

This study examined how children's attentional orientation towards environmental cues, dispositional sympathy and inhibitory control were associated with their ethical guilt. Participants were 4- and 6-year-old children (N = 211; 55% male) from ethnically diverse backgrounds. To assess ethical guilt, children were presented with two vignettes depicting ethical violations and reported how they would feel and why, if they had committed those transgressions. Using eye tracking, we calculated attentional orientation as the percentage of time children attended to other-oriented (i.e., victim) minus self-serving (i.e., object gained by transgressing) cues during these vignettes. Children also reported on their sympathy and completed an observational measure of inhibitory control. Although main effects were not significant, sympathy moderated the link between attentional orientation and ethical guilt: attentional orientation was positively associated with ethical guilt for children with low levels of sympathy but had no effect among those high in sympathy. These findings suggest that practices centred on prompting children to attend to other-oriented cues - and away from self-serving ones - may be effective particularly for children who are generally less sympathetic.

Facial reactions to emotional films in young children with conduct problems and varying levels of callous-unemotional traits

BACKGROUND

Elevated levels of callous-unemotional (CU) traits have proven useful for identifying a distinct subgroup of children whose conduct problems (CP) are early emerging, severe, persistent, and underpinned by aberrant emotional processing. The early childhood emotional experiences and expressions of CP subtypes are poorly understood, despite their importance to understanding the problematic attachments and atypical social affiliation experienced by children with elevated CU traits. The current study aimed to test for differences in facial emotional reactions to mood-inducing film clips in children with CP and varying levels of CU traits.

METHOD

We compared facial emotional reactions during a developmentally appropriate mood induction task in a mixed-sex sample of clinic-referred preschool children (Mage  = 3.64 years, SD = 0.63, 66.9% male) classified as CP with elevated levels of CU traits (CP + CU; n = 25) versus low CU traits (CP-only; n = 47), and typically developing children (TD; n = 28).

RESULTS

Relative to TD children, children with clinical CP showed less congruent and more incongruent facial emotional expressions to sad and happy film clips, controlling for child sex, age, and ethnicity.

CONCLUSIONS

Consistent with older samples, young children with CP show atypical facial emotional expressions in response to positive and negative emotional stimuli. Findings have implications for developmental models of childhood antisocial behavior and can inform the development of targeted interventions.

"If Only I Could Have Stopped It": Reflections of Adult Child Sexual Abuse Survivors on Their Responses During the Abuse

Child sexual abuse (CSA) has received much research attention in recent years, leading to the considerable development of services provided for children worldwide. The literature in the field of trauma studies recognizes that responses to trauma are of central importance and mainly discusses the fight-flight-freeze model of automatic responses to traumatic events. For a variety of reasons, research on this specific subject in the field of CSA is sparse. The current study was designed to spotlight the way adults perceive their responses during incidents of CSA. Semistructured interviews were carried out with 20 survivors who described their responses. The results pointed to the irrelevance of "fight or flight" responses in the context of CSA and emphasized compliance, avoidance, and simply surviving the abuse. In addition, the survivors shared the thoughts they had had during the abusive incidents. Specifically, while they understood that what was being done to them was wrong, they also realized that there was little they could do other than try to survive. The survivors' reflections on how their responses to CSA affected their negative self-attributions and on the way they contend with difficult incidents in adulthood suggest the central role played by CSA responses. The findings point to the multifaceted nature of responses to CSA and to the urgent need to further examine them by exploring other relevant contexts and perceptions to develop a theoretical model that will address responses to child abuse and inform both prevention and intervention efforts.

Moral Development in Adolescence

This article provides a selective review of research on moral development in adolescence during the past decade. We begin with introducing key concepts and reviewing critical theoretical advances in the field of adolescent moral development. This includes integrative models to the developmental study of morality and dynamic socialization models of moral development. Next, related major empirical findings are presented on moral emotion-behavior links, morality in intergroup contexts, and the socialization of moral development. Next, methodological innovations are presented, including new techniques to assess and analyze moral emotions and moral behaviors. We conclude by pointing to promising future directions for moral development research and practices aimed at promoting ethical growth and civic responsibility in adolescents around the globe.

Digital Behavioral Phenotyping Detects Atypical Pattern of Facial Expression in Toddlers with Autism

Commonly used screening tools for autism spectrum disorder (ASD) generally rely on subjective caregiver questionnaires. While behavioral observation is more objective, it is also expensive, time-consuming, and requires significant expertise to perform. As such, there remains a critical need to develop feasible, scalable, and reliable tools that can characterize ASD risk behaviors. This study assessed the utility of a tablet-based behavioral assessment for eliciting and detecting one type of risk behavior, namely, patterns of facial expression, in 104 toddlers (ASD N = 22) and evaluated whether such patterns differentiated toddlers with and without ASD. The assessment consisted of the child sitting on his/her caregiver's lap and watching brief movies shown on a smart tablet while the embedded camera recorded the child's facial expressions. Computer vision analysis (CVA) automatically detected and tracked facial landmarks, which were used to estimate head position and facial expressions (Positive, Neutral, All Other). Using CVA, specific points throughout the movies were identified that reliably differentiate between children with and without ASD based on their patterns of facial movement and expressions (area under the curves for individual movies ranging from 0.62 to 0.73). During these instances, children with ASD more frequently displayed Neutral expressions compared to children without ASD, who had more All Other expressions. The frequency of All Other expressions was driven by non-ASD children more often displaying raised eyebrows and an open mouth, characteristic of engagement/interest. Preliminary results suggest computational coding of facial movements and expressions via a tablet-based assessment can detect differences in affective expression, one of the early, core features of ASD. LAY SUMMARY: This study tested the use of a tablet in the behavioral assessment of young children with autism. Children watched a series of developmentally appropriate movies and their facial expressions were recorded using the camera embedded in the tablet. Results suggest that computational assessments of facial expressions may be useful in early detection of symptoms of autism.

Third-Party Intervention in Peer Victimization: Self-Evaluative Emotions and Appraisals of a Diverse Adolescent Sample

African American, European American, Mexican American, and Native American adolescents (N = 270) described how they felt and appraised their own actions in response to a peer's victimization. Analyses compared times they had calmed victim emotions, amplified anger, avenged, and resolved conflicts peacefully. Adolescents felt prouder, more helpful, more like a good friend, and expected more peer approval after calming and resolving than after amplifying anger or avenging peers. They also felt less guilt and shame after calming and resolving. Avenging elicited more positive self-evaluation than amplifying. Epistemic network analyses explored links between self-evaluative and other emotions. Pride was linked to relief after efforts to calm or resolve. Third-party revenge reflected its antisocial and prosocial nature with connections between pride, relief, anger, and guilt.

No way to run or hide: Children's perceptions of their responses during intrafamilial child sexual abuse

BACKGROUND

Child maltreatment (CM) has received much research attention in recent years, leading to substantial development of relevant child services worldwide. The literature on posttraumatic stress accentuates the long-term mental and physical ramifications of peritraumatic responses. However, although CM is considered a traumatic experience, examinations of child responses to CM have rarely been attempted.

OBJECTIVE

The current study spotlights children's responses during intrafamilial child sexual abuse (IFCSA), as conveyed by them during forensic interviews.

PARTICIPANTS AND SETTING

The sample is comprised of 40 transcripts of forensic interviews with children aged 4-14, who have been sexually abused by their fathers.

METHODS

The exploration of the children's responses to the abuse was guided by the grounded theory approach and their narratives were thematically analyzed.

RESULTS

Indicate that when children contend with ongoing and severe IFCSA, they tend to develop alternative survival strategies, understanding that fight, flight, or disclosure are not relevant options for them.

CONCLUSION

The discussion stresses the multifaceted nature of the way children respond during IFCSA, which should be understood through holistic observation of the children and various aspects of their lives. The children's responses profoundly shape their abuse experiences and require further exploration so as to promote both intervention and prevention efforts.

Using automated computer vision and machine learning to code facial expressions of affect and arousal: Implications for emotion dysregulation research

As early as infancy, caregivers' facial expressions shape children's behaviors, help them regulate their emotions, and encourage or dissuade their interpersonal agency. In childhood and adolescence, proficiencies in producing and decoding facial expressions promote social competence, whereas deficiencies characterize several forms of psychopathology. To date, however, studying facial expressions has been hampered by the labor-intensive, time-consuming nature of human coding. We describe a partial solution: automated facial expression coding (AFEC), which combines computer vision and machine learning to code facial expressions in real time. Although AFEC cannot capture the full complexity of human emotion, it codes positive affect, negative affect, and arousal-core Research Domain Criteria constructs-as accurately as humans, and it characterizes emotion dysregulation with greater specificity than other objective measures such as autonomic responding. We provide an example in which we use AFEC to evaluate emotion dynamics in mother-daughter dyads engaged in conflict. Among other findings, AFEC (a) shows convergent validity with a validated human coding scheme, (b) distinguishes among risk groups, and (c) detects developmental increases in positive dyadic affect correspondence as teen daughters age. Although more research is needed to realize the full potential of AFEC, findings demonstrate its current utility in research on emotion dysregulation.

Adults' Responses to Children's Crying after a Moral Transgression

This study investigated how adults respond to a moral transgression committed by a child offender, by examining the role of the child's sex, emotions, and crying behavior when caught committing a moral transgression on adults' forgiveness, trust, and disciplinary behaviors. An experimental survey manipulated the children's sex, crying, and their emotional expressions (fear, sadness, shame, and crying). Participants (N = 847) reported how they would feel, their willingness to forgive (immediately and a week after the event) and to trust the child, estimated recidivism, and the use of disciplinary behaviors. Results showed that participants in the crying conditions reported significantly higher levels of intention to trust and forgive the child a week after the event, and a lower estimation of the child committing a similar act in the future than participants in the non-crying conditions (ps < .05). Compared to men, women anticipated higher intentions to forgive (ps < .05), and more inductive behaviors, less overreactivity and warmth removal towards the child (ps < .001). Overall, the results suggest the functional value of crying in children-adults relations and the importance of the gender of both child and adults in a context of a moral transgression committed by a child.