2-039 - Effects of Adverse Childhood Experiences on Adult Cognition, Health Biomarkers and Health Risk Behaviors

Session Type: Paper Symposium

Integrative Statement

A substantial proportion of children and adolescents experience chronic adversities including abuse and neglect, bullying, parent mental health and substance use problems, parent incarceration, and exposure to community violence. Although attention has mainly been focused on how adverse childhood experiences increase risk for poor mental health and health risk behaviors, the proposed paper symposium is designed to (a) document effects of adverse childhood experiences on cognitive health, health biomarkers, and health risk behaviors in adulthood and (b) identify pathways by which adverse childhood experiences give rise to poor cognitive, behavioral, and health outcomes in adulthood. Paper 1 tests the hypothesis that childhood maltreatment is associated with cognitive deficits in adolescence and adulthood net of pre-existing cognitive vulnerabilities and family risk. Paper 2 tests the hypothesis that childhood bullying victimization will be associated with biological markers of age-related disease at mid-life (e.g., inflammation and adiposity) independent of other childhood risk factors and key adult variables. Paper 3 tests whether adverse childhood experiences increase risk for health risk behaviors (substance use, risky sexual behavior, and violence perpetration) by making adolescents less optimistic about their future prospects. Strengths of these papers include the use of large, nationally representative cohorts from New Zealand (Paper 1), the United Kingdom (Paper 2), and the United States (Paper 3), reliance on prospective measures of childhood adversity (Papers 1 and 2), and careful temporal ordering of adverse childhood experiences, confounding or mediating factors, and cognitive and health outcomes.

Sub Unit

• Biological Processes

Chair

• Sara R Jaffee, University of Pennsylvania

Discussant

• Isabelle Ouellet-Morin, Univ of Montreal

Individual Presentations

• Child maltreatment and IQ decline into adult life - Presenting Author: Andrea Danese, King's College London

• Childhood bullying victimization predicts adult risk factors for age-related disease in a 5-decade longitudinal British cohort - Presenting Author: Louise Arseneault, King's College London; Ryu Takizawa, King's College London; Barbara Maughan, King's College London

• Pathways from Early Adversity to Health Risk Behaviors: The Mediating Role of Adolescents’ Expectations for the Future - Presenting Author: Lauren Brumley, Univ of Penn; Sara R Jaffee, University of Pennsylvania