Childhood Trauma as a Mediator of the Relationship between Borderline Personality Disorder and Emotion Recognition
Open Access
- Author:
- Meinert, Julie
- Area of Honors:
- Psychology
- Degree:
- Bachelor of Arts
- Document Type:
- Thesis
- Thesis Supervisors:
- Kenneth N. Levy, Thesis Supervisor
Kenneth N. Levy, Thesis Honors Advisor
Martha Ellen Wadsworth, Faculty Reader - Keywords:
- Borderline personality disorder
Childhood trauma
Emotion recognition
Emotional neglect
BPD - Abstract:
- Purpose: The purpose of this study is to examine emotion recognition capacities in patients with borderline personality disorder (BPD) as a function of traumatic experiences. Method: Sixty clinical participants reliability diagnosed with a structured interview for BPD called the International Personality Disorder Examination (IPDE) were assessed for traumatic experiences using the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire-Short Form (CTQ-SF) and for emotion recognition capacities using the Reading the Mind in the Eyes Task (RME). It was hypothesized that BPD severity in terms of number of symptoms would be associated with decreased emotion recognition ability and that trauma severity would mediate this relationship. Results: There was no significant difference between the BPD and control groups for overall RME, F(1,53) = .76, p = .387, η2 = .014. BPD symptoms were associated with negatively valenced RME scores (rs = -.24, p = .019). Negatively valenced RME accuracy was negatively associated with overall CTQ score (rs = -.28, p = .033) and emotional neglect (rs = -.41, p = .0013). The SPSS PRCOESS macro found there was no significant mediation of overall CTQ score on the association between dimensional BPD, β = -.0009, SE = .0035, 95% CI [-.0086, .0048], and negatively valenced RME scores, β = -.0040, SE = .0029, 95% CI [-.0097, .0016]. Consistent with the hypothesis, BPD symptom severity was related to difficulty recognizing negative emotions and greater trauma severity in childhood. Contrary to hypothesis, trauma did not explain the relationship between BPD symptoms and deficits in recognizing emotions.