Future research needs to consider the role of fathers or male caregivers in the emotional development of physically maltreated children.
However, maltreated children's resulting hypervigilance for aggressive stimuli may have deleterious effects on their information processing in nonthreatening conditions.
Recall and recognition measures revealed no differences between maltreated and nonmaltreated children's semantic memory functioning for neutral stimuli.
This variable identifies those subjects who were maltreated only during the elementary school age period, between ages 6 and 11 years.
The adolescents' ages ranged from 14 to 19 years, and they had been maltreated in their family of origin.
The processes underlying maltreated children's emotional recognition reflect adaptive (but costly) responses to their environments.
Two thirds of the victims showed authority conflict problems, and almost all of the maltreated boys displayed behaviors characteristic of the overt and covert pathways.
However, the high resilience maltreated children exhibited a distinctive pattern of diurnal variation.