Childhood adversity and approach/avoidance-related behaviour in boys

Childhood adversity has been suggested to affect the vulnerability for developmental psychopathology, including both externalizing and internalizing symptoms. This study examines spontaneous attention biases for negative and positive emotional facial expressions as potential intermediate phenotypes. In detail, typically developing boys (6-13 years) underwent an eye-tracking paradigm displaying happy, angry, sad and fearful faces. An approach bias towards positive emotional facial expressions with increasing childhood adversity levels was found. In addition, an attention bias away from negative facial expressions was observed with increasing childhood adversity levels, especially for sad facial expressions. The results might be interpreted in terms of emotional regulation strategies in boys at risk for reactive aggression and depressive behaviour.