Cognitive Processes Associated with Child Neglect

This study compared 34 neglectful mothers to 33 non-neglectful mothers to assess their ability to process and remember information related to children’s emotions and behavior. Neglectful mothers were significantly less likely to recognize infants’ feelings of interest, more likely to see sadness and shame, more inaccurate in labeling infants’ emotions, and had a more limited emotional vocabulary and a poorer recall of information. Results indicated that neglectful mothers have significant problems in processing information related to their children’s emotions and behaviour, which may affect their childrearing.