Child Abuse and Cognitive Psychology

On November 4th 1970, Los Angeles child welfare authorities became aware of the abuse, neglect, and social isolation of Susan “Genie” Wiley. Upon farther investigation, they discovered that Susan, a thirteen-year-old, had been severely maltreated by her father. Susan’s father came to a conclusion early in her life that she was socially unfit or “retarded’ and was ashamed of her. He hid her in the back bedroom of the Wiley home and kept her from neighbors, family, and friends. Thus leaving Susan unable to develop language skills learned from communicating and interacting with other people. She was taking away from her home and placed in the care of the state. Scientist and Psychologist took this as an opportunity to test hypotheses and theories on language acquisition skills. Susan learned gradually, but because she was not exposed to early childhood language skills, she was not able to retain the information permanently. Even today in her late fifties, she is ward of the state in California and has limited verbal skills.

Child abuse is a widespread problem in America and beyond. Every year more than 3 million reports of child abuse are made in the United States involving more than 6 million children(1a). For many years, experts believed that the negative effects of child abuse, such as emotional problems, flashbacks to traumatic events, and even learning problems, were psychological phenomena only, able to be cured with therapy. Now, however, beliefs are being changed with the help of tools such as MRI imaging, able to detect actual changes in brain anatomy, and it appears that what doesn't kill you may still permanently weaken you, at least when it comes to child abuse.

Traumatic brain injuries (TBI) are the one of the leading causes of cognitive impairments in children (Ryan, p. 86). In any given year, the United States will have about 475,000 cases of TBI in people under 14 years old (Lewis, p. 348). While, injuries such as these in adults can be severe, the effects of the injury on a child’s developing brain may be devastating. A lesion on a rapidly developing brain may be particularly detrimental, often resulting in delays or cessation of development (Braine, p. 330). Children who fall victim to traumatic brain injuries may be normally developing in some domains and have deficits in others. Some deficits may only be noticed after some time (Rollins, p. 273). Language is a cognitive domain that may be particularly vulnerable to these injuries.

Trauma caused by experiences of child abuse and neglect appears to have serious effects on the developing brain (“Effects of Child Abuse and Neglect for Children and Adolescents”, 2014) Consequences of child abuse and neglect can affect all avenues of development; being physical, developmental, emotional, psychological and social, all of which are interrelated. It can also lead to mental health problems, learning and developmental problems along with behavioural and physical problems. After reviewing the information on abuse and neglect, a research proposal that was generated is looking at the ways in which neglect and abuse impact the ability to optimize working memory. It is known that abuse and neglect significantly impacts language development because it can interfere with the brains ability to develop properly. However there are still many avenues that could be studied further. What exactly is being impacted and how? The more studies that can be conducted, the more information the

Moreover, in line with the Health Belief Model (Becker, 1974), childhood abuse predisposes somebody to a myriad of negative health practices; such as substance misuse, unsafe sex, risk taking, self-harm, and eating disorders (Claes & Vandereycken, 2007). From the biopsychosocial perspective, this crucial transaction between the individual, the environment and behaviour would explain the development and maintenance of problems - abuse having a causal relationship to physical ill-health over a cumulative period of time. In contrast to a reductionist medicalised approach, holistic frameworks are better suited at tackling this link between chronic stress and lifestyle. Moreover, a history of childhood abuse may only become apparent after a survivor

“Child abuse casts a shadow the length of a lifetime.”-Herbert Ward. With long hours of research over this topic, I understand what child abuse is about and how they could change mentally. When people see a child that is very mischievous, they may think that the child is just a bad kid, but what they do not realize is they may have a terrible household environment; the child is probably abused at home and needs something that they can’t get at home. It is sad that people could do such a horrible thing to an innocent child and for them not to be able to feel safe in their own home, let alone their own family. Sometimes we forget about that child abuse happens every single day. Just because you do not see it, does not mean it does not happen.

In conclusion, researching childhood trauma and the correlation to adulthood substance abuse could help tremendously with prevention efforts for future abusers. If we found a strong correlation between childhood trauma and personality traits among substance abusers, then we can use this information for better prevention efforts within society. This research could benefit the field of personality psychology by adding insight about negative experiences impacting the development of a person’s personality and habits that can form from these experiences. The research presented within this review has presented a pattern throughout personality psychology that I was unaware of previously. Based on the patterns in personality from childhood to adulthood,

Abandonment and neglect may result in the child receiving impaired brain development. Abandoned children are habitually maltreated resulting in children adapting in negatives

It is clear that this is a mental illness, which involves disruption of memory, awareness and perception of human being. This disorder is more chronic as it dwells on childhood trauma. In matters of consciousness, it gives us alternative personalities, which function with or without awareness of one's personality of matters of expectation. It is also clear that most of evidence that are integrated with this dissociation functional based on personal identity, which includes our focus on the consciousness and awareness of the surroundings. This disorder based on consciousness is a mechanism, which allows our mind to separate and have some compartment in matters of thought from normal consciousness. It is hence that it tries to give us an overview as most of memories are erased, but are buried on one’s body for its resurface later (Morton, 2017). Most of the facts of this disorder are related to hypnosis, which involves temporarily on altered state of its consciousness. However, this disorder may pose some severe

The researchers investigated the theory of exposure to early childhood abuse or neglect leads to damaging effects on the victim’s brain development, and neurobiological alterations (Nikulina and Widom, 2013, p. 417). Stress and early trauma on cortical development is hypothesized to cause academic and cognitive limitations concerning situations of maltreatment, in addition to insufficiencies in nonverbal reasoning and executive functioning in middle adulthood (Nikulina and Widom, 2013, p. 417). This study examines if child neglect and abuse foresees development of nonverbal reasoning ability and executive functioning in middle adulthood, in addition it hypothesizes if PTSD (Post Traumatic stress Disorder) adds to the likelihood of the development

According to Klein (2010) functional neuroimaging technologies, such as positron emission tomography (PET) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), have revolutionized neuroscience, and provided crucial tools that link cognitive psychology and traditional neuroscientific models in the diagnosis and treatment of brain disorders (Klein, 2010; Sabb & Bilder, 2006). Neuroimaging refers to a collection of techniques that allow scientists to investigate the functions of the brain through the detection of metabolic changes caused by the increase in neural activity during a task (Klein, 2010). Similarly, Moran and Zaki (2013) state that functional neuroimaging has become a primary tool in the study of human psychology (Moran & Zaki, 2013).

A brief history of brain imaging as described by Raichle (2009) begins with the introduction of computerized tomography (CT) in the early 1970s and development of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) shortly thereafter, which prompted the invent and use of positron emission tomography (PET), and then functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) which came in the 1990s (p.119). Since then other forms of brain scanning technology have appeared such as the Magnetoencephalography (MEG) scan, and other variations of PET and MRI such as diffusion tensor imaging (DTI). The appearance of these types of brain imaging techniques has provided great insight into the structure and function of the human mind.

Cognition includes a variety of high-level mental processing, such as memory, learning, reasoning and language understanding. Theories construct frameworks to explain the complex mechanism underlying cognitive processing. Nevertheless, in order to have a more thorough understanding of cognition, it is necessary to study its neural basis inside where it locates: the brain. Neuroimaging is now commonly used as a direct measure to investigate the neural basis of cognition by correlating brain structure and activity with cognitive performance. However, neuroimaging does have a number of considerable limitations. In this essay, it would be argued that despite the advantages of neuroimaging over lesion and animal studies, its correlational nature and relatively poor spatial resolution make other research methods in biopsychology remain vital for the study of cognition. Since cognitive process is more correlated to functional rather than structural properties of the brain, functional imaging would be focused in this essay.

Around the world the number of children abusing drugs has been on the rise for quite some time. Children often turn to drug abuse in order to cope with psychological trauma such as rape, violence, physical abuse, and even mental abuse. In order to limit the number of children abusing drugs and prevent the rate from continuing to rise, the plan is to install a program in the elementary school systems to evaluate these students. When counselors evaluate students away from home they can generally see how their home life is by their reactions to things and their actions when certain things are mentioned. Counselors evaluating these type of actions and getting the children help at

Although it is clear that human language is a very different communication system than those of other species. The jury is still out on the issue of whether language is a really a system different from other human cognitive systems. The status of language is a major issue for cognitive psychology.