Children Who Face Hardships May Not Recognize Rewards
July 20th, 2009
Many of life’s social norms can be difficult to navigate for children who have faced abuse or other traumatic experiences, but the full extent of the psychological effects of hardship aren’t always very clear. In an effort to understand how children adapt socially within the context of hardship, a group researchers at Harvard and its medical institution have tested the recognition of reward cues in disadvantaged children. The study’s results suggest that while negative and neutral cues are understood as well as they are in unaffected children, reward cues present a significant difficulty. Re-training this perception may help children heal from unfortunate experiences.
© Copyright 2009 by http://www.GoodTherapy.org Therapist Washington, DC Bureau - All Rights Reserved.
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Comments
That’s sad. These children have probably listened to broken promises all their lives. I wouldn’t get excited about promised rewards when I’d become used to being disappointed repeatedly either.
It’s good to hear intervention is now in sight.
It’s no wonder these children have difficulty in believing something good can happen when they’ve been raised in abused families. The only people they can trust is themselves
Has anyone given any thought to the sad fact that these kids just do not know how to react when things are good for them? they have most likely been treated like crap for most of their lives so when someone offers them something positive or a little ray of sunshine they just do not know how to react to that. It is so sad to think of a child who does not know how to accept kindness because they have never been given that before but that happens to be the sad reality for too many of today’s kids.
I perfectly agree with Betty. My neighbours are the worst kind to have abusive, perverted and unemployed. Their children have been taken away and placed in very good foster homes. The younger of the two kids has still not settled in. He is quite a handful for the new family. The reason being he doesnt know how to behave in a good environment. Its difficult for children who have been used to all kinds of atrocities from childhood.
When a child is deprived of its right to be a child it looks at the world with suspicious eyes. Every thing is translated as barter. It cannot accept kindness as just that. It always looks at the world defensively.
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