Background: Early-life stress (ELS) such as abuse and
neglect have a detrimental effect on cognitive control.
In parallel, studies in maltreated samples have documented
deficits in reward processing. Yet, surprisingly,
few studies have examined whether reward
can still improve cognitive control in ELS samples
as it does in healthy populations. Objective: To test
the extent to which reward may improve cognitive
control in different types of maltreated samples.
Method: Ninety-eight female university students, age
18–27 years, participated and were split into three
groups: those with prior sexual abuse experience
(SA, N = 28), those with emotional neglect experience
(EN, N = 30) and unaffected comparison women
(HC, N = 40). To assess the main objective, participants
performed a previously validated version of the
rewarded Stroop task. Results: The results suggested
that women from the SA group had a larger reward
effect (faster performance) than women from the
other two groups during rewarded relative to nonrewarded
Stroop trials. This was still present when
the response mapping was incongruent. Conclusions:
Although the data are contrary to expectation, they
are consistent with some prior published work. This
may suggest that the precise factors (internal
motivation, ingratiating behaviour) surrounding
reward processing after maltreatment remain to be
determine