Parental physical punishment (e.g., spanking) of children can gradually escalate into child physical abuse (CPA). According to social-information processing (SIP) models of aggressive behaviors, distorted social cognitive mechanisms can increase the risk of maladaptive parenting behaviors by changing how parents detect, recognize, and act on information from their social environments. In this study, we aimed to identify differences between mothers with a low and high risk of CPA regarding how quickly they detect positive facial expressions. Based on their use of spanking to discipline children, 52 mothers were assigned to a low- (n = 39) or high-CPA-risk group (n = 13). A single-target facial emotional search (face-in-the-crowd) task was used, which required participants to search through an array of faces to determine whether a target emotional face was present in a crowd of non-target neutral faces. Search efficiency index was computed by subtracting the search time for target-present trials from that for target-absent trials. The high-CPA-risk group searched significantly less efficiently for the happy, but not sad, faces, than did the low-CPA-risk group; meanwhile, self-reported emotional ratings (i.e., valence and arousal) of the faces did not differ between the groups. Consistent with the SIP models, our findings suggest that low- and high-CPA-risk mothers differ in how they rapidly detect positive facial expressions, but not in how they explicitly evaluate them. On a CPA-risk continuum, less efficient detection of positive facial expressions in the initial processes of the SIP system may begin to occur in the physical-discipline stage, and decrease the likelihood of positive interpersonal experiences, consequently leading to an increased risk of CPA.

中文翻译：

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父母有可能遭受儿童身体虐待的阳性面部表情检测效率较低

父母对孩子的身体惩罚（例如打屁股）会逐渐升级为儿童身体虐待（CPA）。根据攻击性行为的社会信息处理（SIP）模型，扭曲的社会认知机制可以通过更改父母从其社交环境中检测，识别和处理信息的方式来增加适应不良的父母行为的风险。在这项研究中，我们旨在确定低CPA风险和高CPA风险的母亲之间，他们如何快速检测到积极的面部表情之间的差异。根据打屁股对孩子的管教，将52名母亲分配到低（n = 39）或高CPA风险组（n = 13）。使用了单目标面部情感搜索（面对人群）任务，这要求参与者搜索一系列面孔，以确定在非目标中性面孔中是否存在目标情感面孔。搜索效率指数是通过从不存在目标的试验中减去目标存在试验的搜索时间来计算的。与低CPA风险组相比，高CPA风险组搜索幸福（而不是悲伤）面孔的效率显着降低。同时，两组之间自我报告的情绪定级（即效价和唤醒）没有差异。与SIP模型一致，我们的发现表明，低CPA和高CPA风险的母亲在快速检测出积极的面部表情的方式上有所不同，但在明确评估面部表情的方式上却没有差异。在具有CPA风险的连续体上，