Childhood trauma increases risk for psychopathology and cognitive impairment. Prior research mainly focused on the hippocampus and amygdala in single diagnostic categories. However, other brain ...regions may be impacted by trauma as well, and effects may be independent of diagnosis. This cross-sectional study investigated cortical and subcortical gray matter volume in relation to childhood trauma severity.
We included 554 participants: 250 bipolar-I patients, 84 schizophrenia-spectrum patients and 220 healthy individuals without a psychiatric history. Participants filled in the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire. Anatomical T1 MRI scans were acquired at 3T, regional brain morphology was assessed using Freesurfer.
In the total sample, trauma-related gray matter reductions were found in the frontal lobe (
= -0.049,
= 0.008;
= 0.048), this effect was driven by the right medial orbitofrontal, paracentral, superior frontal regions and the left precentral region. No trauma-related volume reductions were observed in any other (sub)cortical lobes nor the hippocampus or amygdala, trauma-by-group (i.e. both patient groups and healthy subjects) interaction effects were absent. A categorical approach confirmed a pattern of more pronounced frontal gray matter reductions in individuals reporting multiple forms of trauma and across quartiles of cumulative trauma scores. Similar dose-response patterns were revealed within the bipolar and healthy subgroups, but did not reach significance in schizophrenia-spectrum patients.
Findings show that childhood trauma is linked to frontal gray matter reductions, independent of psychiatric morbidity. Our results indicate that childhood trauma importantly contributes to the neurobiological changes commonly observed across psychiatric disorders. Frontal volume alterations may underpin affective and cognitive disturbances observed in trauma-exposed individuals.
Objective
This study investigated associations between childhood trauma, parental bonding, and social cognition (i.e., Theory of Mind and emotion recognition) in patients with schizophrenia and ...healthy adults.
Methods
Using cross‐sectional data, we examined the recollections of childhood trauma experiences and social cognitive abilities in 74 patients with schizophrenia and 116 healthy adults.
Results
Patients had significantly higher scores compared with healthy participants on childhood trauma, and lower scores on parental bonding and social cognitive measures. Physical neglect was found to be the strongest predictor of emotion recognition impairments in both groups. Optimal parental bonding attenuated the impact of childhood trauma on emotion recognition.
Conclusion
The present study provides evidence of an association between physical neglect and emotion recognition in patients with schizophrenia and healthy individuals and shows that both childhood trauma and parental bonding may influence social cognitive development. Psychosocial interventions should be developed to prevent and mitigate the long‐term effects of childhood adversities.
BackgroundChildhood adversity is associated with cognitive impairments in schizophrenia. However, findings to date are inconsistent and little is known about the relationship between social cognition ...and childhood trauma. We investigated the relationship between childhood abuse and neglect and cognitive function in patients with a first-episode of schizophrenia or schizophreniform disorder (n = 56) and matched healthy controls (n = 52). To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study assessing this relationship in patients and controls exposed to similarly high levels of trauma.MethodsPearson correlational coefficients were used to assess correlations between Childhood Trauma Questionnaire abuse and neglect scores and cognition. For the MCCB domains displaying significant (p < 0.05) correlations, within group hierarchical linear regression, was done to assess whether abuse and neglect were significant predictors of cognition after controlling for the effect of education.ResultsPatients and controls reported similarly high levels of abuse and neglect. Cognitive performance was poorer for patients compared with controls for all cognitive domains except working memory and social cognition. After controlling for education, exposure to childhood neglect remained a significant predictor of impairment in social cognition in both patients and controls. Neglect was also a significant predictor of poorer verbal learning in patients and of attention/vigilance in controls. However, childhood abuse did not significantly predict cognitive impairments in either patients or controls.ConclusionThese findings are cross sectional and do not infer causality. Nonetheless, they indicate that associations between one type of childhood adversity (i.e. neglect) and social cognition are present and are not illness-specific.
•Children of incarcerated caregivers may be at higher risk for challenges to school success.•The quantification of positive childhood experiences (PCEs) is important to determine as children of ...incarcerated parents are less likely to experience many PCEs.•Programs to support PCEs among children of incarcerated parents may help to reduce the impact of household incarceration on children.
Positive childhood experiences (PCEs) foster healthy child development. Yet little is known about the degree to which children of incarcerated parents are exposed to positive childhood experiences (PCEs), such as participation in after-school activities, volunteering in the community, and residing in a safe and supportive neighborhood. We analyzed 2017–2018 data from the National Survey of Children’s Health to examine the relationship between caregiver incarceration and two academic outcomes, repeating a grade and school absenteeism, controlling for child and caregiver characteristics, and to examine the relationship between caregiver incarceration and PCEs, controlling for child and caregiver characteristics. Children exposed to household incarceration had higher odds of repeating a grade than children not exposed to household incarceration (aOR 1.62; 95% CI 1.23–2.13). Children with exposure to household incarceration had lower odds of residing in a supportive neighborhood than children without exposure to household incarceration (aOR 0.77; 95% CI 0.64–0.93). Findings from this study can be used by policymakers and program developers in the development and implementation of programs for children with incarcerated parents.
According to schema theory, early maladaptive schemas (EMSs) are formed due to unsatisfied core emotional needs in childhood. However, there is limited research about the association between parent’s ...EMS and the child’s EMS.
The current study investigated the mechanisms underlying the relationship between the parent’s disconnection and rejection schemas and the child’s disconnection and rejection schemas.
One hundred seventy-nine mother-late adolescent dyads participated in the study. Mothers filled out the forms at home, and adolescents completed the forms in the classroom.
The adolescents completed the Young Schema Questionnaire-Short Form-3 (YSQ-SF3), Childhood Trauma Questionnaire, Father Involvement Scale, and Resilience Scale. The mothers completed only the YSQ-SF3.
Mothers' EMSs related to the disconnection and rejection domain predicted their children's EMS in the same domain. Adverse childhood experiences also significantly mediated this relationship only when father involvement was low (β = .08, SE = .04, 95% CI .01, .18).
The current study provides evidence that EMSs are passed on from one generation to the next through adverse childhood experiences especially when fathers do not provide enough support in childrearing.
Adverse childhood experiences confer an increased risk for physical and mental health problems across the population, prompting calls for routine clinical screening based on reported adverse ...childhood experience exposure. However, recent longitudinal research has questioned whether adverse childhood experiences can accurately identify ill health at an individual level.
Revisiting data collected for the Adverse Childhood Experience Study between 1995 and 1997, this study derived approximate area under the curve estimates to test the ability of the retrospectively reported adverse childhood experience score to discriminate between adults with and without a range of common health risk factors and disease conditions. Furthermore, the classification accuracy of a recommended clinical definition for high-risk exposure (≥4 versus 0–3 adverse childhood experiences) was evaluated on the basis of sensitivity, specificity, positive and negative predictive values, and positive likelihood ratios.
Across all health outcomes, the levels of discrimination for the continuous adverse childhood experience score ranged from very poor to fair (area under the curve=0.50–0.76). The binary classification of ≥4 versus 0–3 adverse childhood experiences yielded high specificity (true-negative detection) and negative predictive values (absence of ill health among low-risk adverse childhood experience groups). However, sensitivity (true-positive detection) and positive predictive values (presence of ill health among high-risk adverse childhood experience groups) were low, whereas positive likelihood ratios suggested only minimal-to-moderate increases in health risks among individuals reporting ≥4 adverse childhood experiences versus that among those reporting 0–3.
These findings suggest that screening based on the adverse childhood experience score does not accurately identify those individuals at high risk of health problems. This can lead to both allocation of unnecessary interventions and lack of provision of necessary support.
Topic of review:
Childhood trauma has been associated with increased depression; however, resilience has been found to reduce this association.
Method of review:
Present analyses were based on ...multivariate meta-analytical techniques, an extension of univariate meta-analysis. All computations were performed using the metafor package and the metaRmat package from R. Bivariate associations (r) between trauma, resilience, and depression were utilized as the pooled effect sizes.
Criteria for inclusion:
Following Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines, articles were coded based on the following inclusion criteria: (a) sample participants had a history of childhood trauma; (b) studies included one of the four instruments of trait resilience; (c) studies included measures of individual outcomes of depression; (d) studies were published in peer-reviewed journals, dissertations, book chapters since 2009, or provided by leading scholars who had yet to publish their data; (e) all manuscripts were written in English; and (f) studies included the Pearson Product Moment Correlation Coefficient (r) for the effect size.
Criteria for review:
We systematically coded for the following items for each study: year of publication, type of report, peer-reviewed, funding, sampling strategy, sample size, gender, mean age, country of study, measure of resilience, measure depression, and measure of childhood trauma.
Major findings:
The pooled correlations indicate that trauma, resilience, and depression are significantly associated. There were no significant differences in symptoms of depression for high versus low reports of resilience for individuals with a history of trauma. Year of publication was a significant moderator for the associations between trauma, resilience, and depression. Resilience significantly mediated the association between trauma and depression.
Both adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) and peer influences consistently predict early tobacco, alcohol, and illicit drug use. However, less research considers how peer and community influences ...contribute to or modify the association between ACEs and early substance use. This study addresses these gaps in the literature by analyzing multilevel, longitudinal data from the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods (PHDCN; N = 1,912). Unstructured socializing and peer substance use largely explained the association between ACEs and drinking, smoking cigarettes, and illicit drug use in the past month. A history of ACEs magnified the association between peer substance use and the number of cigarettes smoked. Collective efficacy also shaped the associations between peer influences, ACEs, and substance use, but in different ways depending on the substance use outcome analyzed.
Exposure to early-life adversity is known to predict DNA methylation (DNAm) patterns that may be related to psychiatric risk. However, few studies have investigated whether adversity has ...time-dependent effects based on the age at exposure.
Using a two-stage structured life course modeling approach, we tested the hypothesis that there are sensitive periods when adversity induces greater DNAm changes. We tested this hypothesis in relation to two alternatives: an accumulation hypothesis, in which the effect of adversity increases with the number of occasions exposed, regardless of timing; and a recency model, in which the effect of adversity is stronger for more proximal events. Data came from the Accessible Resource for Integrated Epigenomic Studies, a subsample of mother–child pairs from the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (n = 691–774).
After covariate adjustment and multiple testing correction, we identified 38 CpG sites that were differentially methylated at 7 years of age following exposure to adversity. Most loci (n = 35) were predicted by the timing of adversity, namely exposures before 3 years of age. Neither the accumulation nor recency of the adversity explained considerable variability in DNAm. A standard epigenome-wide association study of lifetime exposure (vs. no exposure) failed to detect these associations.
The developmental timing of adversity explains more variability in DNAm than the accumulation or recency of exposure. Very early childhood appears to be a sensitive period when exposure to adversity predicts differential DNAm patterns. Classification of individuals as exposed versus unexposed to early-life adversity may dilute observed effects.
Children in early childhood education and care (ECEC) spend a considerable amount of time interacting with their peers. However, open questions remain on whether and how children influence their ...peers' language development. The present study examined effects of peers' German receptive vocabulary (n = 1,871) on individual children's (n = 431) receptive vocabulary gains. Target children were between 30 and 48 months old at the beginning of the study. Findings revealed no links between peers' vocabulary skills and individual children's vocabulary gains, neither for all children nor depending on children's prior vocabulary skills. However, for children with lower prior skills, there was a negative association between the percentage of dual language learners in the classroom and children's vocabulary gains. This link was not attributable to peers' vocabulary skills. A number of possible mediators and moderators for peer effects were examined but none of them proved to be significant. In sum, these (null-) findings inform future research on compositional and peer effects as well as their underlying processes. Moreover, they have important practical implications for policymakers and ECEC professionals.
Educational Impact and Implications StatementA current issue for policy and practice is how the distribution of children from differing backgrounds in early childhood education and care classrooms affects children's development. This study found that children's language development was not linked to the language skills of their peers in early childhood education and care classrooms. However, children with low societal language skills showed less improvement in their language skills if they attended a classroom with a high percentage of bilingual children (children exposed to another language at home). While our findings provide no evidence that peers' language skills relate to individual children's language skills, they suggest that classroom composition may be relevant to language development under certain circumstances. Additional research on the specific mechanisms and risk factors is needed in order to provide clear implications for policy and practice.
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