Effects of Maltreatment on Childs Memory
Although scientific studies about maltreatment and memory are still in its early wake, many scholars have found its importance. For example, these studies have found that child maltreatment resulted into effects such as short-term brain damage which later on possess significant effects on the childs memory. There are also findings which reveal that upon the acts of maltreatment towards the child, the subject experience false memories after laboratory examinations. However, it is not purposively attempt to provide empirical reviews regarding false memories as this may constitute broader scope of the topic.
Before going through a review of the five scholarly studies, it is essential that this paper would define major variables such as maltreatment, memory, stress, trauma, and socio-emotional factors relating to the subject of the studies.
According to Goodman et al (2010), maltreatment are acts of physical abuse, sexual abuse, andor psychological abuse that constitutes profound failures of care giving and in effect, results to psycho-emotional damages. However, there may be variations in the definitions of maltreatment across every states or countries depending on their legal interpretations. One certain effect of maltreatment, according to Goodman et al (2010) is that the victim is being deprived of essential factors for normal adaptation of personal development. They also argue that children who have suffered from maltreatment in there are more likely to carry the effects throughout their life. This hypothesis will be justified based on results of investigations conducted for diverse subjects.
Memory here is defined as the psychological accounts of experiences wherein a person is able to recount when a similar event or circumstance triggers the subconscious to relive the experience, thus, producing the same emotional distress as it happened in the first time. In the case of maltreated children, their ability to recount the actual events concerning stressful life experiences is very high especially if the event has happened in the early stages of their childhood. This assumption will be justified through a series of empirical results provided by the studies concerned.
Stress is developed when a subject is involuntarily subject to events which solicit emotions which are unhealthy for the victim. In the case of maltreated children, stress is prevalent when they feel obliged to recount events from the maltreatment to give information, for example in laboratory examinations. Or, stress may become prevalent when a child who has become a victim of maltreatment will be faced with factors, for example, the doer of the abuse, and experience the urge to remember stressful events without their prior voluntariness. Stress can still be experienced even by adults with stressful experience in the past brought by maltreatment. However, their ability to recount these events is dependent on the severity of the maltreatment or their capacity to undergo normal process of emotional and psychological healing.
The Nature of Child Maltreatment and its Consequences
In the primitive times, punishments are carried out by adults, particularly parents to correct behaviors of children. Some forms of punishment include beating, slapping, pinching, and other physical forms. These methods may positively constitute to a specific level of trauma for children especially if reasons are not very well explained. The severe application of punishments may lead to child abuse. However, the concept of child abuse is far different from child maltreatment primari5ly because the latter constitutes broader scope and the former may be identified under child abuse but requires rigorous process of getting into the causes and effects.
Among the most common forms of child maltreatment is physical and emotional neglect and sexual abuse. Child neglect is considered as the most frequent acts of maltreatment, according to the Childrens Bureau (2009). On the other hand, sexual abuse, as one of the most identified forms of maltreatment, received greater amount of attention from researchers and scholars for the matter of identifying its effects on the childs memory. Based on a report provided by Goodman et al (2010), the topic of sexual abuse on children has been the focus of controversy primarily because of two reasons the notion of repressed memory and the argument that most sexual abuse situations take place in daycare settings. Findings on sexual abuse also serve as major evidences on legal cases, forensic interview practices, and even in the formulation of local and national policies for children. What fueled the controversies in discussing child maltreatment is the intervention of psychologists and their assumption that sexual abuse has significant effects on the childs memory. Although it may be possible that sexual abuse may not cast effects on the victims memory, one thing is certain, and that is, in every cases, there are justified negative and positive outcome of the experience depending on the victims ability to incorporate self-healing
In an empirical study conducted by Goodman et al (2001), it was reported that at least five out of 10 children experience sexual assaults before their 18th birthday. More of these cases were left unreported, or if consulted to legal courts, the basis of its validity is on the childs statements.
In examining the consequences of maltreatment on children, a rich body of research findings concludes that there are crucial effects on the victims cognitive, socio-emotional, and neuropsychological aspects. In findings cited by Goodman et al (2010), there were cases of maltreatment wherein the victims are suffering from delays. Such delays are in forms of cognitive processes, language, and intelligence. It was assessed that these children who become victims of maltreatment are one to two years behind as compared to other children who have the similar demographic features. Given the assumption of delays (because not all cases of child maltreatment constitutes delays and this aspect is still under debate), one of the highly observable effects is the childs inability to perform cognitive tasks in adherence with factors such as gender and age. Another implication of child maltreatment is the limited language abilities executed by the victims, especially in memory-inducing interviews. With these circumstances, the child will most likely to exhibit stutters and reduction of comprehension when the child is prompted with questions pertaining to past events. These delays can be present regardless of the amount of information suggested to be remembered by the child. However, it is emphasized that memory deficits are not always evident in children who became victims of maltreatment because at some point of the studies, there were reported advantages regarding the recall of past experiences (Goodman et al, 2010).
In terms of the socio-emotional aspect, child maltreatment is believed to have effects on the regulation of emotions, whether extrinsic or intrinsic. This may involve factors such as attention processes, interpretations, and copying of the behaviors. According to Goodman et al (2010), children who experienced maltreatment were exhibiting poor emotional regulations as compared to non-maltreated children. That is, expressed in their negative reactions to some events. Maltreated children are also more likely to respond to positive and more appropriate emotion regulation. It is generalized that both physically and emotionally abused children, as well as those who are neglected are more likely to develop difficulty in regulating their emotions.
Maltreatment also constitutes increased attentiveness to events suggesting emotional information. For example, Goodman et al (2010) cited empirical findings that maltreated children easily identifies negative emotions such as anger or hatred and they can easily label such emotions as negative as compared to their ability to recognize positive ones. This may be due to the accumulated negative emotions that the victims had in the course of the maltreatment process. Moreover, it was found out that maltreated children have difficulty in disengaging themselves to negative stimuli, and as a result, such stimuli develops into full-blown emotional reactions. These circumstances are all in correlation to the development of stress and trauma among adults, who were become victims of maltreatment during their childhood years. As a result, adults exhibit symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PSTD). This suggests that adults are more likely to be more attentive to information on events which induce stress or trauma. The more serious effect is that adults with PSTD can prolong their response to negative stimuli and later on develop better memory for such kind of information.
Another crucial effect of child maltreatment, which has become common but definitely the most problematic in terms of sociological capacity, is their perception on social relationships and their tendencies to lose trust or the lacking of trust for other people. Since maltreatment during childhood shows that there is some extent of care giving unresponsiveness, victims usually build up the belief that adults (or other people) are most likely to become unresponsive of their need and eventually develop negative feelings against them. Difficulties in relationships are highly evident in adolescent to young adult stage but it is believed that such circumstance is negated given some time.
In legal cases, one of the interesting consequences of child maltreatment is the perception of the victim that other people would normally be unsupportive of their needs or their claims regarding the incident. This is most evident in when victims are asked of vital information regarding the stressful event. They are most likely to feel insecurity to disclose pertinent information because of the belief that they cannot generate support from other people. To counter this, interviewers or forensic professionals usually extend reassurance and protection support to the victim for them to be participative in the process of resolving cases. Here, the victim is experiencing repressed emotion due to their inability to trust other people. Hence, social dissociation is most likely to be experienced by victims of child maltreatment.
Memory and Child Maltreatment
PSTDs and other mental health problems have some crucial effects to the victims memory. Some of the symptoms include emotional numbing and intrusive memories of flashbacks. The intensity of the memory can be as severe as the first the first encounter. It is also possible that when flashbacks occur, the victim may not be able to feel any kind of emotions (emotional numbing), but the negative effect may recur given some time. This is in direct correlation with a childs dissociation to the traumatic events. This is critical because the victim may find it hard to disengage himself to the situations which trigger pain, stress, and trauma.
This aspect of research on child maltreatment is still new however, there are a number of efforts to determine the association of memory and maltreatment on child. For example, one methodology to assess this is the eyewitness memory recall interview wherein the childs memory is subject to documentation prior to his past experiences. In empirical findings cited by Goodman et al (2010), it was found out that when victims of child maltreatment were subject to eyewitness interview, majority of them can remember the events or the experiences vividly even if the information of the experience is painful. Thus, it is concluded that the accuracy of the memory of a maltreated child is relatively high. However, there are no significant comparisons whether a maltreated childs memory is more accurate than that of the non-maltreated ones.
For example, in a study conducted by Eisen et al (2002), three 16-year olds were interviewed to examine their memory as part of an inpatient abuse-assessment program. There were no fixed categorization of the form of abuse, thus, the subjects ranged from the physical to sexual abuse, and even neglect. The study also examined children who are not maltreated as the experiments control group. Results showed interesting findings as follows first, it was found out that older children are more likely to remember events vividly and possess the ability to answer questions in a precise manner as compared to the other subjects who are of younger age. Secondly, this group of victim rarely makes a mistake when they are asked of sexually-abusive misleading questions. Subjects who are younger oftentimes made this kind of mistakes.
Eisen et al (2007) additionally begin that greater dissociative tendencies were associated with added memory error for an child maltreatment examination. Trauma symptoms were not associated with increased inaccuracy for victims who appear beneath dissociative tendencies. This signifies larger memory error in traumatized children who are faced with a stressful event.
Three issues have received considerable attention in research on eyewitness memory among children being maltreated. Because memory is the core issue under study, it is palpable that findings would be vulnerable to external factors. Indeed, it is essential to conduct prospective research in which documented cases of child sexual maltreatment. Other studies focused not on the question of whether people remember documented child sexual abuse but instead on the accuracy of memory among individuals who in fact recognize abuse. Overall, memories of child maltreatment appear to be retained quite well over time, corresponding to findings suggesting that emotional events in characteristic are retained surpassingly true in that occasion than are ordinary or non-emotional events.
Conclusion
Overall, the discussion above shows that there is a strong relationship between child maltreatment and memory. In fact, factors such as stress, trauma, and other psycho-emotional instability are significant determiner of how a child remembers events pertaining to maltreatment. Child maltreatment may come in various forms such as physical and sexual abuse, and even neglect. The intensity of which a child remembers events in relation to the maltreatment is also dependent on his capability to cope in with such distress. Capabilities are not constant since such would depend on the gravity of the maltreatment received, the support system that the child has, and his personal clinging to such past events. It was discovered from the review of empirical studies above that the effect of child maltreatment on children can be potentially carried out until the adulthood stage. One of the most common effect of maltreatment is memory is the occurrence of flashbacks. This, however, according to the articles reviewed, can be surpassed given an amount of time necessary for recovery.
Limitations
The review just focused on child maltreatment in general. There are other significant and more detailed areas of child maltreatment that needs to have an additional amount of attention. For example, the topic on eyewitness memory and child maltreatment was not discussed in the course of the review. There are related articles pertaining to such area of study. Case studies were also not given to discuss the comparisons of the effect of maltreatment towards adulthood. It is equally important to somehow measure the length of grave to mild effect of maltreatment on a persons memory. Another interesting topic in relation to this one is how maltreatment affects intrapersonal and interpersonal relationships of the victim. Although this may cast a little attention to the memory, this area would entail significance since it will explain why victims of child maltreatment can or cannot handle relationships with quality.
Implications
Findings in the studies being reviewed have posted valuable importance in the investigations of how maltreatment affects a childs memory. These studies have created a ground basis on which researchers can be able to plot a graphical memory development impact among maltreated children. Such could be a principal contributor for other research endeavors to push through. Civic organizations pertaining to child are benefitted of these kinds of studies since it provides them empirical information on the effects of child maltreatment. In return, these findings may potentially incur movements from concerned groups such as civic volunteers, policy makers, and health workers. What I think is the most valuable contribution of research like the ones being reviewed is that they induce the motivation and the urge for legislators to formulate laws that will protect the rights and welfare of those who are victims of abuse.
Future Researchers
Other researchers may want to tackle topics such as child maltreatment, memory, and its after-effects on the course and development of relationships or eyewitness memory and child maltreatment. Future research may also want to engage in different but related endeavors such as effects of child maltreatment an d memory in academic or professional performanceexcellence andor child maltreatment and its post-trauma effects as experienced in personal relationships.
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