Emotional and cognitive adjustment in abused children

Research on the impact of maltreatment on children has increased in the last years, as there is a need to design appropriate treatment strategies. Social, cognitive, and emotional areas may be affected in these children. This research is aimed to study the psychological functioning of child victims, particularly in their emotional and cognitive adjustment. Nineteen children (10.3 years old) with case histories of at least 2 years of physical and emotional parental abuse and a group of 26 nonmaltreated children (9.4 years old) matched in socio-economic characteristics and coming from the same community area were compared in depressive symptomatology and attributional style by using the standardized measures from Kovacs' Children's Depression Inventory (CDI) and Kaslow's Children Attributional Style Questionnaire (CASQ). General and detailed statistical analyses on the emotional and cognitive areas assessed showed significant differences between groups. Child victims showed greater feelings of sadness, lower self-esteem and self-worth, and they perceived the aversive events in their lives as unpredictable which generated helplessness. This is a result of their lack of control of those aversive events. Results are contrasted with those obtained by other researchers who used similar methodology and are discussed in terms of the learned helplessness' model proposed and developed by Seligman, Kaslow, Alloy, Peterson, Tanenbaum, and Abramson (1984). Implications for the child abuse victims' emotional and cognitive rehabilitation are also analyzed and discussed.