Summary: Psychological Effects Of Spanking

Key Study One: Psychological Effects of Spanking

Elizabeth Thompson Gershoff, PhD, of the National Center for Children in Poverty at Columbia University has been a lead researcher on the effects of positive punishment in the form of corporal punishment in the home. The 2002 study, published by the American Psychological Association, aimed to explore any links between spanking and an increased risk for detrimental child outcomes (Spanking and child outcomes: Old controversies and new meta-analyses, 2016, June).

The large-scale meta analyses of 88 studies included 62 years of collected data, and looked for associations between the use of domestic corporal punishment and 17 child behaviours and experiences. Corporal punishment was the dependent

Which is why, in 2009, researchers Akemi Tomoda, Hanako Suzuki, Keren Rabi, Yi-Shin Sheu, Ann Polcari, and Martin H. Teicher, sought out to answer the question of what neurobiological effects, if any, corporal punishment in childhood has on young adults. Their research involved using voxel-based morphometry, VBM, to investigate alterations in the grey matter volume, GMV, of young adults who were exposed to the harsh corporal punishment, HCP. In this study, HCP was the independent variable and GMV was the dependent

The control group comprised of 22 young adults including 6 males and 16 females with the mean age of 21.7 years. Young adults were operationally defined as Americans from 18-25. Harsh corporal punishment was operationally defined as at least one spanking a month for three years, with frequent use of objects such as a belt. The population was chosen from 1,455 volunteers who completed a detailed online assessment, from which eligible subjects were invited for three visits of psychometric testing (Tokoma, A. et al., 2009, March 12). These assessments and tests were used to limit the number of confounding variables or extraneous factors, and excluded volunteers “who had any history of substance abuse, any recent substance use, head trauma with loss of consciousness, significant fetal exposure to alcohol or drugs, perinatal or neonatal complications, neurological disorders, or medical conditions that might adversely affect growth and development” (Tokoma, A. et al., 2009, March 12, pg.