Citation

Gamwell K, Nylocks M, Cross D, Bradley B, Norrholm SD, Jovanovic T. Dev. Psychobiol. 2015; 57(7): 799-808.

Affiliation

Department of Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences, Emory University School of Medicine, Atlanta, GA. tjovano@emory.edu.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2015, John Wiley and Sons)

DOI

10.1002/dev.21313

PMID

26011240

Abstract

Fear conditioning studies in adults have found that posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is associated with heightened fear responses and impaired discrimination. The objective of the current study was to examine the association between PTSD symptoms and fear conditioned responses in children from a highly traumatized urban population. Children between 8 and 13 years old participated in a fear conditioning study in addition to providing information about their trauma history and PTSD symptoms.

RESULTS showed that females showed less discrimination between danger and safety signals during conditioning compared to age-matched males. In boys, intrusive symptoms were predictive of fear responses, even after controlling for trauma exposure. However, in girls, conditioned fear to the danger cue was predictive of self-blame and fear of repeated trauma. This study suggests there are early sex differences in the patterns of fear conditioning and that these sex differences may translate to differential risk for trauma-related psychopathology. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. © Dev Psychobiol 9999: 1-10, 2015.

Language: en