Altered neural processing of emotional words in adults with a history of institutionalization: Evidence from the emotional Stroop task

Abstract

We investigated neural correlates of traumatic experience related to the lack of family care in adults with a history of institutionalization (IC) using the Emotional Stroop paradigm. The goals of our study were twofold: we investigated whether adults with IC history (n = 24; Mage = 22.17, SD = 6.7) demonstrate atypical processing of emotionally salient words in general, and whether they exhibit selective processing bias toward family related words compared to adults raised in biological families (BFC; n = 28; Mage = 22.25, SD = 4.9). Results demonstrated significant differences in accuracy but not response times between groups on the behavioral level, indicating that the IC group was overall less accurate in identifying the color of the font. Contrary to our prediction, there were no significant differences between neural response to family related versus unrelated words in the IC and BFC groups. The absence of group differences can be explained by the selection of stimuli, which were associated with family rather than institutional history. The IC group showed a larger N280-380 component in response to negative words compared to the BFC group, and larger negativity in the right parietal area in response to positive words in the same time window. Results demonstrate that institutional history is marked by altered emotional processing in the subpopulation of institutional care-leavers, but the footprint is not specific to traumatic experience and extends from general sensitivity to emotional words.