Unpredictable Environmental Input and Socioemotional and Cognitive Development

Session Type: Paper Symposium

Abstract

Extensive research has documented the profound influences of environmental adversity on individual development. The dimensional approach of environmental adversity highlights how adversity may be organized along specific dimensions that have distinct influences and mechanisms. Importantly, unpredictable and fluctuating environments were advanced as one salient dimension. This symposium presents a series of studies that include cross-species evidence (i.e., human, animal), quantified environmental unpredictability with various methods, and examined the potential influences of environmental unpredictability on various socioemotional and cognitive functioning.
Utilizing a socioeconomically high-risk sample, Paper 1 documented that early-life unpredictability (before age five) may promote risky socioemotional functioning in general, but unpredictability may have distinct sensitive periods of influence for each outcome domain (i.e., impulsivity vs. emotion dysregulation). Paper 2 presented findings from a large adolescent sample and illuminated distinct ramifications of deprived, unpredictable, and threatening environment. Findings also documented life-history-related cognitive schema as a mediating mechanism between adversity exposure and decreased temporal discounting. Paper 3 utilized a novel operationalization of parenting unpredictability and revealed that maternal parenting-unpredictability was linked to higher growth in externalizing problems via young children’s lower increases in cognitive functioning. Paper 4 employed cross-species design (i.e., rodents, monkeys, and humans) and documented robust associations between maternal unpredictable sensory input observed during parent-child interactions and poorer memory performance for offspring in the juvenile periods. Collectively, these studies have crucial implications in underscoring the influences of unpredictable contexts on multiple domains of individual development, highlighting potential sensitive periods of influence and distinct mediating mechanisms for unpredictability.

Sub Unit

• Family Context & Processes

Chair

• Zhi Li, Peking University

Individual Presentations

• Early unpredictability predicts impulsivity and emotion dysregulation from childhood through adolescence - Presenting Author: Jenalee Doom, University of Denver

• Dimensions of Early Adversity, Life History-Related Cognitive Schemas, and Behavioral Outcomes in Adolescents - Presenting Author: Susan A Brener, University of Utah; Ethan S Young, Utrecht University; Willem E Frankenhuis; Bruce J Ellis, University of Utah

• Parenting Unpredictability, Child Cognitive Abilities, and Socioemotional Functioning - Presenting Author: Zhi Li, Peking University; Melissa L Sturge-Apple, University of Rochester; Patrick Davies, University of Rochester

• Early life exposure to unpredictable parental sensory signals shapes cognitive development: Evidence from 3 species - Presenting Author: Elysia Poggi Davis, University of Denver; Kai McCormack, Spelman College & Emory University; Hina Arora, University of California-Irvine; Desiree Sharpe, University of Georgia; Annabel K Short, University of California-Irvine; Laura Glynn, Chapman University; Curt Sandman, University of California, Irvine; Hal Stern, University of California-Irvine; Mar M. Sanchez, Emory University; Tallie Z Baram, University of California-Irvine