One of the most important elements of understanding children exposed to violence is that all humans process, store, retrieve and respond to the world in a state-dependent fashion... When a child is in a persisting state of low-level fear that results from exposure to violence, the primary areas of the brain that are processing information are different from those in a child from a safe environment. The calm child may sit in the same classroom next to the child in an alarm state, both hearing the same lecture by the teacher. Even if they have identical IQs, the child that is calm can focus on the words of the teacher and, using neocortex, engage in abstract cognition. The child in an alarm state will be less efficient at processing and storing the verbal information the teacher is providing. This child’s cognition will be dominated by sub-cortical and limbic areas, focusing on nonverbal information - the teacher’s facial expressions, hand gestures, when she seems distracted. And, because the brain internalizes (i.e., learns) in a ‘use-dependent’ fashion, this child will have more selective development of non-verbal cognitive capacities. The children raised in the vortex of violence have learned that non-verbal information is more important than verbal. B D Perry
Posted on: Sat, 17 Aug 2013 21:50:59 +0000
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