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Experiencing the Death of a Biological Parent in Childhood or Adolescence and Cognitive Functioning in Adulthood
Sun, August 9, 8:00 to 9:30am, TBAAbstract
Death of a loved one is a traumatic experience, affecting all aspects of one’s life. Research has documented the relationship between death of biological parent and accelerated biological aging. An estimated 4.5 million American adolescents will experience a parental death before age 18. As adolescents are entering adulthood, it is vital to understand the psychosocial factors they are exposed to and how they are related to health and the aging process. Few studies have examined social isolation as a mediator in the relationship between a death of a biological parent and cognitive decline. Using data from Waves I and VI from the National Longitudinal of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health) (N= 4,934), this paper explores the relationship between death of a biological parent in adolescence and cognitive functioning using OLS multivariate regression. I pay particular attention to social isolation as mediator in this association. Preliminary results show that experiencing a parental death in childhood or adolescence was associated with a decline in executive functioning while other measures of cognitive functioning were not associated. In addition, social isolation was significantly associated with cognitive functioning in all measures, except for executive functioning for U.S White adults, but was only significant for executive functioning for U.S Black adults. This indicates that losing a biological parent is weakly associated with cognitive functioning in early mid-life, and more attention needs to be paid to different types of family loss, not only biological parents, especially among U.S Black adults. Additionally, results support the need to prioritize social isolation as it is strongly associated with cognitive functioning.