Dimensions of early life adversity and cognitive processing of emotion in youth

Early life adversity (ELA) is a leading risk factor for psychopathology. The Dimensional Model of Adversity and Psychopathology (DMAP) elucidates processes altered by ELA and central to this association. Specifically, DMAP posits early experiences of deprivation alter cognitive and emotional processes in ways distinct from early experiences of threat. While evidence suggests that deprivation and threat predict alterations in cognitive and emotional processes, respectively, the influence of these dimensions on cognitive processing across emotionally valenced material remains unexamined.

This work is the first to investigate associations of deprivation versus threat on cognitive processing of multiple emotions (happy, sad, angry, and neutral facial expressions) and the time course of processing in a sample of youth.

Eighty-two youth (48.80 % female, M_age = 12.85) were recruited from Vancouver.

Deprivation and threat were measured using the Traumatic Events Screening Inventory for Children (TESI-C), an interview-based measure assessing the instance and severity of 30+ experiences of ELA. Cognitive processing was measured using the Affective Posner Task, which assesses attentional biases and raw reaction times for happy, sad, angry, and neutral facial expressions.

Interestingly, experiences of deprivation were associated with early attentional processing deficits regardless of valence, rs ≥ 0.22, ps ≤ 0.046, whereas experiences of threat were associated with late attentional biases for emotional material, Bs ≥ |4.15|, ps ≤ 0.036.

Findings advance theoretical models of ELA by elucidating the nature and time course of cognitive and emotional alterations following deprivation and threat, and, if replicated, suggest the importance of cognitive processing of emotion in early interventions.