Cognitive and emotional conflict control among children affected by parental HIV/AIDS in China

Children affected by parental HIV/AIDS constitute a particularly vulnerable population, often facing heightened risks in psychosocial adaptation due to family disruption, social stigma, and resource deprivation. However, the characteristics of their executive functions, particularly the core component of conflict monitoring, remain unclear.

The present study compared the performance of children affected by parental HIV/AIDS (n=32) to a control group (n=32) on a cognitive conflict and emotional conflict face-word Stroop task.

The results of the cognitive Stroop task demonstrated that both groups showed better performance in congruent stimuli compared to incongruent stimuli (86.20% vs.67.30%; 568.43ms vs.586.04ms). In the emotional Stroop task, the control children displayed a significant interference effect both in the accuracy (85.70% vs. 70.70%) and reaction time (581.53ms vs. 597.98ms) to the incongruent condition compared to the congruent condition. However, the Stroop effect was absent in the children affected by parental HIV/AIDS. The children affected by parental HIV/AIDS can monitor cognitive conflicts, but show some deficits in monitoring emotional conflicts.

In addition, the present findings suggest that the deficit of the emotional conflict control ability among the children affected by parental HIV/AIDS might be due to the fact that emotional stimuli occupy more cognitive resources in the emotional conflict monitoring process.