Neglecting neglect: some thoughts about children who have lacked good input,and are ‘undrawn’ and ‘unenjoyed’

This paper looks at emotional neglect in the early years of life, and postulates some probable long-term sequelae of such neglect. It argues that there is a continuum of neglect; ranging from the severest form, as seen in institutional orphanages, to milder variations. A range of theoretical and research traditions, including developmental psychology, attachment theory and neuroscience are used, alongside psychoanalytic ideas, to attempt to delineate some of the key features and patterns that arise. A question is raised as to whether we have sufficient diagnostic categories or theoretical ideas to make sense of neglected children. Thought is given to the very specific clinical challenges of working with children who are neglected, and how the clinical task might differ from working with children who have suffered other forms of early damage, such as physical abuse. It is argued that these children suffer a multiple, overdetermined form of neglect; their initial neglect because of the form of caretaking they did (or did not) receive being compounded by their inability to use help and then also the tendency of professionals to similarly neglect these children, who can be difficult to relate to and hard to ‘warm’ to.     

Preface

Summary

Child victimization is a serious and on-going problem in the United States and throughout the world. In 2000, an estimated 900,000 children were victims of abuse and neglect in the United States. New and different responses to child maltreatment will have to be developed and implemented in response to the increasingly diverse contexts and situations within which maltreatment occurs. Emerging trends in adult-child boundary violations are explored within this volume from a cross-section of disciplines, including law, sociology, criminal justice, psychology, and health services. The selections analyze issues critical to child maltreatment and offer intriguingly different perspectives of present and future issues related to child abuse.     

No Safe Place

Summary

This article addresses ethical issues associated with the concept of professional and scientific responsibility as related to Principle C, “Integrity” of the APA's 2002 Ethics Code. Differences between aspirational and enforceable ethical standards are noted and contextualized in APA's and other professional society's ethics codes. Three case examples are presented and discussed.     

Goal-driven reasoning overcomes cell D neglect in contingency judgements

Research on contingency judgement typically shows cell weight inequality such that the information in cell A of a contingency table is considered more relevant than the information in cell D, even though both kinds of information have the same confirmatory meaning. Two studies tested whether goal-driven reasoning can lead people to realise the value of the information in cell D. Participants' goal to defend a particular conclusion for which the information in cell D was helpful was manipulated. Whereas participants who did not have that goal displayed the usual cell D neglect, goal-driven participants for whom cell D contained goal-relevant information considered it important. More importantly, in subsequent tasks with different contents where participants were no longer driven by any goal, they continued to consider information in cell D relevant (Study 1), and they were more likely to make correct contingency judgements, which depended on considering cell D (Study 2).     

Weigh(t)ing for Awareness

We wished to learn if weight perception can be extinguished by studying two patients with right hemisphere brain damage. When lifting weights simultaneously, a patient with right frontal damage was not biased in her judgments of which weight was heavier. By contrast, a patient with right parietal damage reported left-sided weights as being lighter than those on the right. Psychophysical power functions revealed that her awareness of increasing weights on the left was dampened compared to the right when lifting weights individually on each side. Strikingly, her awareness of weight changes on the left was completely abolished when she lifted weights in both hands simultaneously. She demonstrated an unusual split in awareness, being motorically aware of and actively engaged with left-sided weights while being unaware of their incremental changes.     

Is Physical Abuse,Neglect, or a Combination of Both More Predictive of Delinquent Behavior in a High-Risk Population?

This study explored early abuse type and severity in relation to delinquency utilizing an archival longitudinal data set. These data were collected every 2 years, starting at age 4, from the individuals, caregivers, and teachers. Mean differences tests were conducted to determine how delinquency scores varied by abuse type and severity. These analyses used Child Protective Services reports of the type and severity of abuse as independent measures and the behavior problem scale from the Child Behavior Checklist, Youth Self Report, and Teacher Report Form as independent measures. Follow-up analyses of variance and post-hoc tests were conducted as necessary to clarify the relationship between abuse and delinquency. Although results did not reach significance, a relatively small mean difference was discovered between severity types (more severe maltreatment history demonstrating higher levels of delinquency) for teacher ratings of delinquency.     

Perceptual biases in processing facial identity and emotion

Normal observers demonstrate a bias to process the left sides of faces during perceptual judgments about identity or emotion. This effect suggests a right cerebral hemisphere processing bias. To test the role of the right hemisphere and the involvement of configural processing underlying this effect, young and older control observers and patients with right hemisphere damage completed two chimeric faces tasks (emotion judgment and face identity matching) with both upright and inverted faces. For control observers, the emotion judgment task elicited a strong left-sided perceptual bias that was reduced in young controls and eliminated in older controls by face inversion. Right hemisphere damage reversed the bias, suggesting the right hemisphere was dominant for this task, but that the left hemisphere could be flexibly recruited when right hemisphere mechanisms are not available or dominant. In contrast, face identity judgments were associated most clearly with a vertical bias favouring the uppermost stimuli that was eliminated by face inversion and right hemisphere lesions. The results suggest these tasks involve different neurocognitive mechanisms. The role of the right hemisphere and ventral cortical stream involvement with configural processes in face processing is discussed.