University Honors

Each year in the United States there are more than 600,000 reports of suspected childmaltreatment (National Child Abuse). Child abuse can take many forms including physicalabuse, neglect, and even emotional abuse. Emotional abuse of a child can be described as aninstance when an adult uses intimidation tactics to control a child. This type of influence can bedefined as “suggestibility”, or the degree to which a child’s “encoding, storage, retrieval, andreport of events” are influenced by social and psychological factors (Ceci, 1993, p. 404). While itmay not be intrinsically obvious that intimidation can be considered a form of child abuse,suggestibility is just as damaging and threatening to a child’s self-confidence and psychologicalstate.Emotional abuse of a child occurs because of the vulnerable position children are induring the stages of their cognitive development. Because a child’s cognitive abilities are stillforming in their early years, children are naturally set behind adults in terms of maturity andintelligence. As a result, children are easily influenced by adult figures and can be subject tomistreatment. Theories of cognitive development provide the conclusion that “children do notthink and reason like adults”; thus, until they reach adulthood, children are continually lookingup to adults to take in information and mimic what they see and hear daily (Spielman, 2020, ch.9.2).In society today, widespread movies and television occasionally display scenes thatdepict parents, teachers, and other influential adults questioning children in confrontational anduncomfortable manners. Popular entertainment sometimes also shows scenes where children arewrongly intimidated and mistreated by adults who take advantage of their lesser intelligence andlack of real-world experience. Not only are these films inaccurate, but they could be dangerous, especially for viewers who frequently engage with children. One of the risks that come withfictional television is the possibility for its viewers to be misled into thinking that everythingthey see on their screens is proper and accurate. To protect children against child abuse, adultsshould be educated on the most effective and appropriate ways to interact with children.