Children up to seven years of age who are exposed to early life adversity scored lower on neurological and cognitive tests than children who experienced minimal or no adversity. Children who experienced early life adversity generally scored lower on tests of visual-motor and sensory-motor skills, listening-vocal skills, intelligence, and academic achievement.
Children exposed to crowded housing and poverty had the lowest scores on a test of sensory-motor skills and a test of listening and vocal functioning. Children in the family loss, instability, and poverty group had the lowest intelligence and arithmetic achievement scores.
Early life adversity includes the following groupings:
- Low adversity
- Parental harshness (using physical actions to discipline a child, making critical and derogatory remarks about the child), and neglect
- Parental divorce or separation and poverty
- Family instability (two or more marital changes)
- Family loss, instability, and poverty (loss of a parent or sibling, being in foster care, frequent moves, etc.)
- Living in crowded housing conditions and poverty
These findings were presented in “Patterns of Adverse Childhood Experiences and Neurocognitive Development,” by Jing Yu, Ph.D.; Denise L. Haynie, Ph.D.; and Stephen E. Gilman, ScD. The researchers analyzed data from a study of nearly 49,853 children whose mothers were enrolled during pregnancy. They classified the children according to their exposure to 12 adverse childhood experiences occurring between birth and 7 years of age. The goal was to examine the co-occurrence of adversities among children and how specific patterns of adversities are associated with neurocognitive development.
For more information, contact: Jing Yu, Ph.D., Staff Scientist, Social and Behavioral Sciences Branch, Division of Population Health Research, Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, 6710B Rockledge Drive, Room 3139B, Bethesda, Maryland 20817; Email: jing.yu2@nih.gov; Website: https://www.nichd.nih.gov/about/org/dir/dph/officebranch/sbsb/yu