Background. Adversity can accelerate maturation. Molar eruption is a simple and scalable way to identify early maturation, but its developmental correlates remain unexplored. Thus, we examined whether accelerated maturation, as indexed by molar eruption, is associated with children’s mental health or cognitive skills. Methods. Molar eruption was evaluated from T2-weighted MRIs in 117 children (63 female, 4-7-years old). Parents reported on mental health with the Child Behavior Checklist. Children completed standardized assessments of fluid reasoning, working memory, processing speed, crystallized knowledge, and math performance. Relationships between molar eruption and developmental outcomes were examined using linear models, with age, gender, income, exposure to Adverse Childhood Experiences, and race/ethnicity as covariates.Results. Earlier molar eruption was positively associated with children’s externalizing symptoms (PFDR = .021), but not internalizing symptoms, and the relationship did not hold when controlling for demographics or stress exposure. Earlier molar eruption was negatively associated with fluid reasoning (PFDR < .001), working memory (PFDR = .033), and crystallized knowledge (PFDR = .001). The association between molar eruption and reasoning held controlling for family income, ACEs, and the child’s race and ethnicity. Molar eruption also significantly mediated associations between both income and Adverse Childhood Experiences, and reasoning. Conclusions. Accelerated maturation, as reflected in early molar eruption, may have consequences for cognitive development, perhaps because it constrains brain plasticity. Knowing the pace of a child’s maturation may provide insight into the impact of a child’s stress history on their cognitive development.
How do children’s experiences relate to their naturalistic emotional and social processing? Because children can struggle with tasks in the scanner, we collected fMRI data while 4-to-11-year-olds watched a short film with positive and negative emotional events, and rich parent-child interactions (n = 70). We captured broad, normative stressful experiences by examining socioeconomic status (SES) and stressful life events, as well as children’s more proximal experiences with their parents. For a sub-sample (n = 30), parenting behaviors were measured during a parent-child interaction, consisting of a picture book, a challenging puzzle, and free play with novel toys. We characterized positive parenting behaviors (e.g., warmth, praise) and negative parenting behaviors (e.g., harsh tone, physical control). We found that higher SES was related to greater activity in medial orbitofrontal cortex during parent-child interaction movie events. Negative parenting behaviors were associated with less activation of the ventral tegmental area and cerebellum during positive emotional events. In a region-of-interest analysis, we found that stressful life events and negative parenting behaviors were associated with less activation of the amygdala during positive emotional events. These exploratory results demonstrate the promise of using movie fMRI to study how early experiences may shape emotional, social, and motivational processes.
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