The relationship between childhood trauma, inhibitory dysfunction, and emotion processing: Exploring differences...

Childhood trauma (CT) has widespread adverse effects on individual's cognitive and emotional problems; however, little is known about the underlying psychological mechanisms. This study aimed to examine the relationship between CT, inhibitory dysfunction, and emotion processing, as well as to explore potential differences in these associations across groups with different levels of social anhedonia.

We administered a set of self-reported measures to capture CT, pleasure experiences, emotion regulation as well as executive dysfunction to 1622 healthy participants. Partial correlation network and nodal centrality were estimated. The mediation effect of inhibitory dysfunction on the relationships between CT and emotion processing was examined. Furthermore, participants were divided into three groups (i.e., high, middle and low) according to their social anhedonia (SoA) levels, network comparison tests and mediation effect analysis in each group were performed.

Network analysis showed that CT was negatively associated with cognitive reappraisal (CR) and pleasure experiences, and positively associated with expressive suppression. Inhibitory dysfunction significantly mediated the relationship between CT and emotion regulation. Subgroup analysis showed that significant mediation effect of inhibitory dysfunction on the association between CT and CR was only found in low SoA group, but not in middle and high SoA groups.

Our study suggested that inhibitory dysfunction plays an important role between CT and emotion regulation, which is disrupted in individuals with middle to high levels of social anhedonia. These findings highlight the necessity of considering inhibitory function when developing interventions for trauma-related emotional problems.