Poster #38 - Childhood adversities and neurocognitive functioning in a large U.S. birth cohort

• In Event: Poster Session 03

Abstract

Adverse childhood experiences have been associated with many adult health problems such as mental illnesses, substance abuse, suicide attempt, cancer, and heart disease (Grummitt et al., 2021; Hughes et al., 2017; Petruccelli et al., 2019). Given that most previous studies were based on retrospective reports of childhood experiences by adult participants, it remains unclear how early adversity affects young children’s development across various domains (e.g., neurological, cognitive, emotional, behavioral). In addition, it remains important to better understand which types of childhood adversities are particularly detrimental to child development and long-term health.

Using data from the United States Collaborative Perinatal Project, we conducted latent class analysis of 13 adversities children experienced between birth and age 7 (e.g., parental harshness, neglect, family mental illness, divorce/separation, childhood poverty, crowded housing) (see methodological details in Yu et al., 2022). In a total of 46,129 children, we identified five latent classes of early adversities: Low Adversity (48% of the sample), Parental Harshness & Neglect (4%), Family Instability (9%), Poverty & Crowded Housing (21%), and Poverty & Parental Separation (19%). Children’s neurocognitive development was assessed at age 7 using the Bender Gestalt Test (visual-motor; reverse-coded mean=-7.11, SD=3.70), Tactile Finger Recognition Test (sensory-motor; mean=9.22, SD=1.16), and Auditory-Vocal Association Test (language; mean=17.81, SD=3.77). Higher scores of these tests indicated better neurocognitive performance.

Mean neurocognitive test scores were estimated for children in each adversity class and Wald tests were conducted to compare whether the mean levels of child neurocognition differed across adversity classes. Controlling for sociodemographic covariates (race, child sex, parental education and employment status, and mother age), we found that children exposed to adversities had lower neurocognitive functioning scores than children not experiencing adversity (see Table 1): Parental Harshness & Neglect (Bender Gestalt: mean difference=-1.54, p<.001; Tactile Finger Recognition: mean difference=-0.13, p=.002; Auditory-Vocal Association: mean difference=-0.08, p=.348), Family Instability (Bender Gestalt: mean difference=-0.69, p<.001; Tactile Finger Recognition: mean difference=-0.65, p<.001; Auditory-Vocal Association: mean difference=-0.65, p<.001), Poverty & Crowded Housing (Bender Gestalt: mean difference=-1.56, p<.001; Tactile Finger Recognition: mean difference=-1.46, p<.001; Auditory-Vocal Association: mean difference=-2.62, p<.001), and Poverty & Parental Separation (Bender Gestalt: mean difference=-1.25, p<.001; Tactile Finger Recognition: mean difference=-0.07, p<.001; Auditory-Vocal Association: mean difference=-1.41, p<.001).

Early life adversities, especially maladaptive parenting behaviors, childhood poverty, crowed housing, and parental separation, significantly undermined young children’s neurocognitive development, which could be potential mechanisms linking these childhood adversities to deleterious health outcomes in adulthood. Interestingly, the combination of childhood poverty and crowded housing seemed particularly detrimental to children’s sensory-motor and visual-motor functions, suggesting that there might be some specificity between certain patterns of early adversities and certain aspects of children’s brain development.

Authors

• Jing Yu, Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD/NIH)
  Presenting Author

• Theemeshni Govender

• Stephen E. Gilman