The impact of childhood trauma on the development of intersubjectivity

• In Event: The Neurophysiological Embedding of Child Maltreatment: Current State of the Literature and Future Directions for Research

Abstract

Human developmental trajectories are strictly dependent on the type and quality of relationships taking place during an extended period of time. Due to their quality, intensity and precocity, some childhood adverse experiences gain pathogenic power leading to specific sequelae affecting the development of victims' intersubjectivity (van der Kolk et al., 2005; Cloitre et al., 2015). In a series of studies (Ardizzi et al., 2013; 2015; 2016) conducted with Sierra Leonean children and adolescents exposed to early, protracted and interpersonal adverse experiences the explicit abilities in emotions identification, the spontaneous facial mimicry and the vagal autonomic regulation were measured. Results demonstrate that being exposed to this kind of early experiences induces bias in negative emotions identification supported by the adaptation of victims’ perceptive and visual attentive mechanisms as supported by more recent eye-tracking measurements (Ardizzi et al., 2017; in prep). Furthermore, during the visualization of others' emotions, a suppression of facial mimicry responses and an ineffective autonomic regulation is demonstrated as well. Thanks to a cross-cultural adaptation processes of the major scales used to diagnose post-traumatic stress disorder, a positive correlation between these specific physiological and behavioral alterations and post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms was found.

These results support the necessity to better investigate and integrate in a consistent framework both trauma related and non-trauma related outcomes of adverse childhood experience exposure. The impact-trajectory of maltreatment and neglect time exposure - a discriminative variable of protracted traumatic events in general - on facial-mimicry and vagal regulation was further investigated in a cross-sectional study involving a large group of street-boys from the age of 4 to 18 years (Ardizzi et al., in prep). Results demonstrated that longer time exposure enhanced incoherent facial-mimicry and ineffective vagal regulation in response to negative facial expressions. Importantly, a compensatory vagal recruitment was evidenced during the first years of maltreatment revealing the natural patterns of victims' coping and chronicity processes. Taken together, these studies point out how childhood trauma deeply shapes victims' intersubjectivity development altering both explicit emotions identification and implicit physiological responses to others' emotions.

Author

• Martini Ardizzi, University of Parma
  Presenting Author