Abstract: Childhood psychological maltreatment has a negative impact on self-development, leading to the formation of a negative self, which can also affect individual behavior. Most previous studies had explored this effect using measurement rather than experimentation, which can be prone to bias and distortion. The self is the key point for individuals to construct their worlds and survive in them. Therefore, it is crucial to investigate the development of the self after psychological maltreatment. We undertook experiments to investigate whether childhood psychological maltreatment influences self-information processing and how emotional information affects the ability of the information process to reveal one’s self-development status. The current study used the Child Psychological Maltreatment Scale (CPMS) to screen participants. Thirty participants reporting histories of psychological maltreatment in childhood (experimental group) and thirty participants who did not report such histories (control group) were recruited for Experiments 1 and 2, respectively. A perceptual matching paradigm was utilized to assess the characteristics of self-related processing. This paradigm can overcome fundamental methodological problems in prior work by using self-names and -faces and providing a strong quantitative means to understand the self-integration function and its dysfunction. In Experiment 1, participants were asked to connect abstract geometric shapes to indicate either themselves (‘you’), or familiar other (‘friend’) or an unfamiliar other (‘stranger’). The task was to judge whether the sequential shape/label pairs matched or did not match. The main purpose of Experiment 1 was to examine whether the inclusion of abstract geometry into the self-system demonstrated a robust advantage of self-related processing. In Experiment 2, negative, neutral and positive emotional stimuli were embedded in the social-connection graph to explore whether the self-related processing of individuals is modulated by emotional information. It was then examined the self-integration function. The results of Experiment 1 showed that the response rate (RT/ACC) of self-related information judgements among the experimental and control groups was significantly faster than those of the friend (p<.001). Compared with the control group, the processing advantages of the friend in the experimental group were enhanced (p<.001). In Experiment 2, the response rate of self-related information judgements in the experimental group was significantly faster than that of the friend under a negative emotional condition (p=.003). There was no significant difference between positive and neutral conditions (ps>.10). In the control group, the response rate of self-related information judgements in the experimental group was significantly faster than that of the friend under both negative and positive emotional conditions (p<.001). In conclusion, through self-related information processing, individuals with or without histories of childhood psychological maltreatment had significant advantages of self-related processing. The self-integration function of psychologically-abused individuals is not stable. Negative emotions maintain the self-processing ability, while positive emotions weaken it. Moreover, there is an advantage of enhanced friend-related processing that is more likely to automatically associate friends with positive emotions. For individuals who are not psychologically abused, the self-integration function is stable and not easily disturbed by emotional information. The research verifies the constructivist self-development theory (CSDT), indicating that psychological maltreatment mainly thwarts the development of a self-benign positive appraisal. According to CSDT theory, we believe priming the secure attachment schema, or positive affect, can weaken inherently negative patterns in adults with histories of childhood psychological maltreatment. The research also suggested that we should pay more attention to children’s family growth environments, make the caregivers fully realise the importance of the child-caregiver relationship and provide children with a full sense of attachment and emotional support as they grow. These are critical to children’s self-adaptive development.

Key words: psychological maltreatment, self, perceptual matching paradigm, emotion

摘要： 儿童期心理虐待会导致个体形成消极自我，这种消极自我还会影响个体行为。与以往研究采用自我报告方法不同，本研究采用知觉匹配范式，用客观量化方法，以自我加工优势（自我关联会自动增强刺激的加工，表现为人们总是对自己相关信息加工又快又好）来评估儿童期遭受心理虐待个体的自我加工能力。结果发现，儿童期遭受心理虐待个体依然存在自我加工优势，且朋友加工优势得到增强；在消极情绪条件下遭受心理虐待个体自我优势稳定存在，在积极情绪条件其自我优势消失。结论：儿童期遭受心理虐待个体自我整合功能并不稳定，消极情绪维持其自我加工能力，积极情绪则降低其自我加工能力。

关键词: 心理虐待, 自我, 知觉匹配范式, 情绪