Trait and State Impulsivity in Maltreated Children

There is good evidence that childhood maltreatment is a potent risk factor for a variety of negative public health outcomes, including anxiety and mood disorders, non-suicidal and suicidal self-injury, substance use disorders, and violent behaviour. One potential mechanism underlying the association between childhood maltreatment and poor outcomes is impulsivity (i.e., acting with little or no forethought, reflection, or consideration of the consequences).

Impulsivity can be seen as a stable personality facet (i.e., trait), usually measured using questionnaires, or it can be observed in one's actions (i.e., state), usually through performance on computerized tasks. There are different ways a child can show trait or state impulsivity. For example, acting without thinking, i.e. blurting out an answer to a question without thinking long enough about the accuracy of the answer is one form of impulsivity.

The inability to wait for things that you desire or resist temptation in favour of long-term goals is another one, i.e. a child who has the tendency to always start watching television prior to completing his home work rather than wait until after he has finished it. Another form of impulsivity can be seen when children cannot stop a motor response following a change or signal in their environment, i.e. a child riding his bike on the road and approaching a traffic light, but who does not manage to stop when the light turns red.

Our project will address four major gaps in our understanding of impulsivity in maltreated children. First, we do not know if maltreated children show impulsivity in all its forms or if they are only characterized by specific forms of impulsivity. Second, although four different subtypes of maltreatment (sexual abuse, physical abuse, emotional maltreatment, and neglect) are recognised and are known to impact children's brain development and cognitive abilities in different ways, we do not know how these different subtypes of maltreatment are related to the various facets of impulsivity.

Third, we know that children can be more or less impulsive depending on whether they are in a positive mood (e.g., happy, excited) or negative mood (e.g., angry, frustrated), but we do not know how different moods influence the different forms of state impulsivity in maltreated children who are known to have emotion regulation difficulties. Finally, it is unclear if impulsivity is one mechanism that links childhood maltreatment and the emergence of emotional and behavioural problems over time.

We need to answer these questions if we want to help those youngsters who are most vulnerable. A better understanding of impulsivity in maltreated children will inform clinical practice because we know that reducing impulsivity is a major focus of key interventions for at-risk children. Thus, the proposed project will ask maltreated children and non-maltreated children to complete questionnaires and computerized tasks that measure different forms of trait and state impulsivity to identify what facets of trait and state impulsivity characterize maltreated children.

Children will first complete all the tasks without any mood induction and subsequently we will examine how their performance on these tasks is influenced following positive and negative mood induction. Finally, we will use openly available prospective longitudinal data from > 11,800 children aged 9-10-years from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study in the U.S to test if trait impulsivity can explain the association between maltreatment and the emergence of emotional and behavioural problems 3-years on.

We will also seek to translate the clinical implications of this research to those who work with children in order to promote strategies to reduce impulsivity. We are well placed to do this given our close collaborations with practitioners (clinicians/teachers) working with at-risk children.