Citation

Lin PZ, Bai HY, Sun JW, Guo W, Zhang HH, Cao FL. Child Abuse Negl. 2017; 65: 58-67.

Affiliation

School of Nursing, Shandong University, Jinan, Shandong 250012, PR China. Electronic address: caofenglin2008@126.com.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2017, Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

10.1016/j.chiabu.2017.01.010

PMID

28113085

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between child maltreatment and prospective and retrospective memory in children/adolescents by investigating the mediating role of neuroticism. In total, 662 children/adolescents aged 10-16 years were recruited from a middle school in China, and they completed questionnaires comprising the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire, Prospective and Retrospective Memory Questionnaire, and the Neuroticism subscale of the NEO Five-Factor Inventory. The severity of maltreatment was positively associated with the severity of impairment of memory (prospective and retrospective considered together) in children/adolescents. Children/adolescents exposed to maltreatment tended to display higher levels of neuroticism. Neuroticism partially mediated the association between child maltreatment and memory in all the subjects. The results of multigroup analyses showed neuroticism fully mediated the relationship between child maltreatment and memory for boys, in which the effect size of indirect effect was 0.52, and partially mediated the association for girls with 0.44 effect size of indirect effect. Early intervention aimed to reduce neuroticism might contribute to a better prognosis in children/adolescences with poor memory function.

Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Language: en

Keywords

Child maltreatment; Children/adolescents; Mediation; Neuroticism; Prospective and retrospective memory