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Early adversity and learning: implications for typical and atypical behavioral development.

Jamie L Hanson^1,2, Wouter van den Bos³, Barbara J Roeber²

¹Department of Psychology, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI, USA.

Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, and Allied Disciplines

|February 4, 2017

Summary

Early life adversity, such as child maltreatment, impairs associative learning in adolescents. This learning deficit partially explains behavioral problems in youth exposed to adversity.

Keywords:

Learning child abuse child development early life experience social behavior

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Area of Science:

Developmental Psychology
Cognitive Neuroscience
Child Psychiatry

Background:

Early adversity, including child maltreatment, is linked to emotion regulation difficulties in children.
The specific mechanisms underlying this relationship, particularly the role of learning processes, remain underexplored.

Purpose of the Study:

To investigate whether general associative learning processes mediate the link between early adversity and negative behavioral outcomes in adolescents.
To examine the impact of child maltreatment on associative learning and its contribution to behavioral problems.

Main Methods:

Eighty-one adolescents (12-17 years) participated, including 41 with a history of physical abuse and 40 controls.
Participants completed a probabilistic learning task to assess associative learning, alongside behavioral assessments.
Mathematical models were used to analyze learning components, including choice variability and reward belief biases.

Main Results:

Adolescents with high early adversity showed significantly lower associative learning compared to controls.
Impaired associative learning partially accounted for increased behavioral problems in the adversity-exposed group.
Mathematical modeling revealed deficits in choice variability and reward prediction biases among youth with early adversity.

Conclusions:

Early adversity impairs adolescents' ability to learn stimulus-reward associations, even with feedback.
Individuals exposed to adversity demonstrated reduced utilization of known reward information and made decisions assuming less consistent rewards.
These findings highlight associative learning deficits as a key mechanism linking early life experiences to behavioral development.