BackHome
Refresh: OffView Personal Schedule
Session Summary
Share...

Direct link:

2-147 - Is there more to childhood adversity than cumulative stress? Distinguishing threat/ deprivation in large-scale studies

Fri, March 22, 1:00 to 2:30pm, Hilton Baltimore, Floor: Level 1, Johnson B

Session Type: Paper Symposium

Integrative Statement

Traditional cumulative stress models claim that the quantity rather than the quality of adverse childhood experiences exerts the greater influence on development (Evans, Li & Whipple, 2013). By contrast, a recent theory – the Dimensional Model of Adversity and Psychopathology (DMAP) – suggests that threat and deprivation give rise to distinct developmental pathways (Sheridan & McLaughlin, 2014). Deprivation involves absence of expected environmental input, predisposing to externalizing symptoms (e.g., due to effects on executive function). Conversely, threat involves experiences that pose a risk to one’s physical integrity, predisposing to internalizing problems (e.g., due to effects on fear processing). In this symposium, we will focus on international and large-scale child and adolescent studies that offer new important insights on this distinction using a multi-method approach. Paper 1 draws on an initial and a replication sample, in order to derive threat and deprivation dimensions, for the first time using a “bottom-up” data-driven approach. Paper 2 focuses on maltreated and high-risk children, to delineate a distinct pathway from threat to avoidant coping and depression in young adulthood. Paper 3 draws on multi-source assessments of cumulative deprivation and cumulative threat as well as psychopathology in maltreated and nonmaltreated youth to demonstrate that while deprivation is specifically linked to externalizing problems, threat experiences have dual effects on externalizing and internalizing problems. Paper 4 shifts attention to HPA-axis activity, demonstrating that deprivation coincides with attenuated cumulative and stress-reactive cortisol while threat is linked to the interplay of cortisol and other neuroactive steroids.

Sub Unit

Chair

Individual Presentations