Trauma and the Middle School Brain

2021 ◽  
pp. 66-86
Author(s):  
Cheryl A. Robertson ◽  
Chelsea L. Robertson
Keyword(s):  
Emotion Regulation ◽  
Executive Function ◽  
Instructional Practices ◽  
Childhood Trauma ◽  
Developmental Trajectories ◽  
Academic Setting ◽  
High Expectations ◽  
Stimulus Variation ◽  
Trauma Informed ◽  
Trauma Histories

This chapter examines the effect of trauma on brain development and the subsequent impact in the academic setting. Childhood trauma is overwhelmingly common and has repeatedly been noted to have serious detrimental effects on children's developmental trajectories. Adolescents with trauma histories have a number of affected skills of which educators need to be especially aware. These skills include learning, memory, executive function, and emotion regulation. Fortunately, educators have a number of instructional practices at their disposal to help children with trauma histories, including classroom-level strategies like stimulus variation and structure and routine, coupled with high expectations. It is suggested that trauma-informed practices be implemented at the classroom and school-wide levels.

Psychodynamic Psychotherapy for Children as a Trauma-Informed Intervention

2021 ◽  
Vol 49 (1) ◽  
pp. 73-85
Author(s):  
Timothy R. Rice ◽  
Tracy Prout ◽  
Jonah Cohen ◽  
Marni Russo ◽  
Talia Clements ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Emotion Regulation ◽  
Childhood Trauma ◽  
Skills Training ◽  
Traumatic Experiences ◽  
Regulation System ◽  
Post Traumatic Stress ◽  
Attrition Rates ◽  
Trauma Informed ◽  
Post Traumatic ◽  
Limited Generalizability

This article outlines the underpinnings of a psychodynamic approach for the treatment of childhood trauma through strengthening the implicit emotion regulation system. Childhood trauma impairs the functioning of the emotion regulation system, where deficits are common in children with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Difficulties with emotion regulation arise out of disruptions in the development of neurobiological pathways through the interaction of constitutional determinants with environmental factors, including the child's relationships with caregivers and the broader environment. We propose that a therapeutic focus on traumatized children's defenses can overcome the damaging reverberations of trauma. This approach may bypass the difficulties of high attrition rates, expense, and limited generalizability characteristic of skills training-based modalities. An illustration of an intervention to help children address unbearable emotions in traumatic experiences through defense interpretation is presented. The manualization and study of this approach within a project titled Regulation Focused Psychotherapy for Children (RFP-C) presents a unique opportunity to contribute to the evidence-based canon of treatments for children with histories of trauma.

Neurobiological Mechanisms of Psychopathology and Treatment Action

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Theodore P. Beauchaine ◽  
Aimee R. Zisner ◽  
Elizabeth P. Hayden
Keyword(s):  
Emotion Regulation ◽  
Executive Function ◽  
Treatment Response ◽  
Trait Anxiety ◽  
Environmental Influence ◽  
Externalizing Disorders ◽  
Psychosocial Treatment ◽  
Childhood And Adolescence ◽  
Trait Impulsivity ◽  
Heterotypic Continuity

In recent years, it has become increasingly clear that common forms of psychopathology derive from complex interactions among neurobiological vulnerabilities and environmental adversities. These interactions can alter neurobehavioral development to yield progressively intractable forms of psychopathology across childhood and adolescence. This chapter focuses on neurobiological mechanisms of trait impulsivity, trait anxiety, stress reactivity, and emotion regulation/executive function. How these traits confer vulnerability to externalizing disorders, internalizing disorders, heterotypic comorbidity, and heterotypic continuity is described. Next, neurobiological mechanisms of treatment response are considered. Trait impulsivity and trait anxiety are highly heritable and derive initially from subcortical structures that mature early in life. In contrast, emotion regulation and executive function, which modulate trait impulsivity and trait anxiety, are more sensitive to environmental influence and derive from cortical structures that mature into young adulthood. Neurobiological mechanisms of psychosocial treatment response are represented largely in the cortex and its neuromodulatory connections with the subcortex.

scholarly journals EXPRESS: Trajectories of verbal fluency and executive functions in multilingual and monolingual children and adults: A cross-sectional study

2021 ◽  
pp. 174702182110267
Author(s):  
Roberto Filippi ◽  
Andrea Ceccolini ◽  
Peter Bright
Keyword(s):  
Working Memory ◽  
Executive Function ◽  
Verbal Fluency ◽  
Fluid Intelligence ◽  
Response Times ◽  
Developmental Trajectories ◽  
Cross Sectional Study ◽  
Human Cognition ◽  
Lexical Retrieval ◽  
Cross Sectional

The development of verbal fluency is associated with the maturation of executive function skills, such as the ability to inhibit irrelevant information, shift between tasks and hold information in working memory. Some evidence suggests that multilinguistic upbringing may underpin disadvantages in verbal fluency and lexical retrieval, but can also afford executive function advantages beyond the language system including possible beneficial effects in older age. This study examined the relationship between verbal fluency and executive function in 324 individuals across the lifespan by assessing the developmental trajectories of English monolingual and multilingual children aged 7 to 15 years (N=154) and adults from 18 to 80 years old (N=170). The childhood data indicated patterns of improvement in verbal fluency and executive function skills as a function of age. Multilingual and monolingual children had comparable developmental trajectories in all linguistic and non-linguistic measures used in the study with the exception of planning, for which monolingual children showed a steeper improvement over the studied age range relative to multilingual children. For adults, monolinguals and multilingual participants had comparable performance on all measures with the exception of non-verbal inhibitory control and response times on the Tower of London task: monolinguals showed a steeper decline associated with age. Exploratory factor analysis indicated that verbal fluency was associated with working memory and fluid intelligence in monolingual participants but not in multilinguals. These findings raise the possibility that early acquisition of an additional language may impact on the development of the functional architecture serving high-level human cognition.

scholarly journals Lagging skills contribute to challenging behaviors in children with autism spectrum disorder without intellectual disability

Autism ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 22 (8) ◽  
pp. 898-906 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brenna B Maddox ◽  
Patrick Cleary ◽  
Emily S Kuschner ◽  
Judith S Miller ◽  
Anna Chelsea Armour ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Autism Spectrum Disorder ◽  
Emotion Regulation ◽  
Executive Function ◽  
Intellectual Disability ◽  
Social Skills ◽  
Challenging Behaviors ◽  
Children With Autism ◽  
Autism Spectrum ◽  
Spectrum Disorder ◽  
Environmental Demands

Many children with autism spectrum disorder display challenging behaviors. These behaviors are not limited to those with cognitive and/or language impairments. The Collaborative and Proactive Solutions framework proposes that challenging behaviors result from an incompatibility between environmental demands and a child’s “lagging skills.” The primary Collaborative and Proactive Solutions lagging skills—executive function, emotion regulation, language, and social skills—are often areas of weakness for individuals with autism spectrum disorder. The purpose of this study was to evaluate whether these lagging skills are associated with challenging behaviors in youth with autism spectrum disorder without intellectual disability. Parents of 182 youth with autism spectrum disorder (6–15 years) completed measures of their children’s challenging behaviors, executive function, language, emotion regulation, and social skills. We tested whether the Collaborative and Proactive Solutions lagging skills predicted challenging behaviors using multiple linear regression. The Collaborative and Proactive Solutions lagging skills explained significant variance in participants’ challenging behaviors. The Depression (emotion regulation), Inhibit (executive function), and Sameness (executive function) scales emerged as significant predictors. Impairments in emotion regulation and executive function may contribute substantially to aggressive and oppositional behaviors in school-age youth with autism spectrum disorder without intellectual disability. Treatment for challenging behaviors in this group may consider targeting the incompatibility between environmental demands and a child’s lagging skills.

Childhood Trauma and a Framework for Intervention

2012 ◽  
pp. 3-22
Author(s):  
Margaret E. Blaustein
Keyword(s):  
Childhood Trauma ◽  
Self Regulation ◽  
Educational Community ◽  
Whole School ◽  
System P ◽  
Trauma Informed ◽  
Whole School Approach ◽  
Environmental Supports

Trauma impacts well over 20% of the population, with far-reaching personal and societal consequences that are often ameliorated by environmental supports. In this chapter, the prevalence, complex impacts and developmental influences of childhood trauma are described, and relevance of trauma to the educational community is established. The Attachment, Self-Regulation, and Competency (ARC) framework is introduced as one whole-school approach to developing a trauma-informed system.

Emotion Dysregulation and Childhood Trauma

2018 ◽  
pp. 263-282
Author(s):  
Patricia K. Kerig
Keyword(s):  
Emotion Regulation ◽  
Posttraumatic Stress ◽  
Empirical Research ◽  
Childhood Trauma ◽  
Emotion Dysregulation ◽  
Theoretical Models ◽  
Traumatic Experiences ◽  
Future Directions ◽  
Developmental Mechanism

This chapter describes theoretical models and empirical research devoted to understanding the aftermath of childhood trauma exposure and discusses the value of considering posttraumatic stress from an emotion dysregulation perspective. After describing definitional controversies in the field related to both trauma and posttraumatic stress, this chapter summarizes research on the effects of chronic, prolonged, and repeated traumatic experiences in childhood, such as maltreatment, with particular attention to its potential to compromise development of adaptive emotion regulation capacities. The role of emotion dysregulation in leading theoretical models of posttraumatic stress is presented, as well as empirical research testing the hypothesis that emotion dysregulation represents an underlying developmental mechanism through which childhood trauma affects functioning over the lifespan. Future directions include a need for clarification in conceptualization and measurement, further developmental processes to be considered, and opportunities for translational work to inform intervention efforts.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document