Child Maltreatment and Children's Trust

描述（由申请人提供）：虐待儿童是一个复杂的、潜在的问题，对个人、家庭和社会造成了天文数字的损失。因此，增进对导致受虐待儿童不良后果的早期发育过程的了解具有高度的公共卫生意义。幼儿信任的发展是一个不断扩大的研究领域。除了对信任能力的规范过程进行进一步调查外，还进行了有限的研究来阐明信任发展中的个体差异的因素。值得注意的是，没有研究调查过受虐待儿童的信任，尽管这些青少年的信任能力可能受到损害。因此，对受虐待儿童信任感的研究将解决理解早期社会发展中重要的、未经研究的损害的一个关键障碍，这些损害对受虐待者随后的人际和关系功能以及随之而来的心理健康责任具有关键影响。在目前的申请中，我们建议从低收入家庭招募300名36至42个月大的儿童；150名儿童有虐待史，150名儿童没有虐待史。孩子们和他们的母亲将参加四个实验环节，以评估认知信任、自我依赖和自我信任的组成部分。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Child maltreatment is a complex, insidious problem that exerts an astronomical toll on individuals, families, and society. Advancing knowledge regarding the early developmental processes that contribute to adverse outcomes in maltreated children is thus of high public health significance. The development of trust in young children is an expanding area of inquiry. In addition to further investigation of normative processes in trust competencies, limited research has been conducted to elucidate contributors to individual differences in trust development. Significantly, no research has investigated trust in maltreated children, despite the likelihood of trust capacities being jeopardized in these youngsters. Accordingly, research on emerging trust in maltreated children would address a critical barrier to understanding important, unstudied impairments in early social development that have crucial implications for subsequent interpersonal and relationship functioning in maltreated individuals, and consequent mental health liabilities. In the present application, we propose to recruit 300 36- to 42-month-old children from low income families; 150 children will have a history of child maltreatment and 150 will have no maltreatment history. The children and their mothers will participate in four laboratory sessions to assess components of epistemic trust, self- reliance vs. deference in trust decision-making, and source memory. The three epistemic trust tasks vary in terms of the degree of cognitive vs. socio-affective sources of information. Mother-child attachment security, theory of mind/false belief understanding, and inhibitory control also will be assessed. Additionally, separate Event Related Potential assessments will be conducted with stimuli yoked to that used in the three epistemic trust assessments. Accordingly, the measurements to be obtained constitute a multilevel assessment of diverse domains that are implicated in contributing to individual differences in the development of children's early trust capacities. Moreover, investigation of these domains holds great promise for identifying mechanisms that may contribute to difficulties that young maltreated children are likely to exhibit in the development of trust. Assessing the consequences of maltreatment occurring in the first three years of life on children's ability to develop trust in others has important implications for their social, interpersonal, and affective development, as well as subsequent mental health. The research also will greatly expand the understanding of normative trust development. This research will have important implications for public health. In addition to advancing knowledge regarding the multilevel developmental roots of early difficulties in trust development, the research will provide valuable direction for early prevention and intervention strategies. Given the multiple mechanisms that are likely to be identified in contributing to early, compromised trust development, insights into different intervention targets will be elucidated.