Adult Women First Exposed to Early Adversity After 8 Years Old Show Attentional Bias to Threat

Abstract

Exposure to early adversity (EA) is associated with long-lasting dysregulations in cognitive processes sustained by brain regions that are sensitive to stress hormones: the hippocampus, the amygdala, and the prefrontal cortex. The Life Cycle Model of Stress highlights the importance of considering the timing at which EA began, as these brain regions follow distinct developmental trajectories. We aimed to test this hypothesis by assessing whether adults exposed to EA exhibit different cognitive patterns as a function of the age at which they were first exposed to EA. Eighty-five healthy men and women aged 21–40 years old (y/o) exposed to EA, as assessed by the Adverse Childhood Experience Questionnaire, were grouped based on the age of first exposure to EA: 0–2 y/o (“Infancy”: hippocampal development), 3–7 y/o (“Early childhood”: amygdala development) and after the age of 8 (“Childhood/Adolescence”: frontoamygdala connectivity development). Declarative memory, attentional bias to threat and emotion regulation were measured. Results revealed increased attentional bias to threat in women first exposed to EA after 8 years. This result is in line with the Life Cycle Model of Stress and highlights the importance of considering the age at exposure to EA when investigating the effects of EA on cognitive processes.

Social Functioning in Individuals Affected by Childhood Maltreatment: Establishing a Research Agenda to Inform Interventions

“…In line with the long-lasting effects of CM, differences in brain structures involved in the regulation of emotion and stress between CM and non-CM groups are well documented [ 22 ]. Differences in developmental timing (which refers to when CM occurs in relation to critical and sensitive periods of the nervous system and body development [ 23 , 24 ]) have been linked to different brain structural volume [ 25 ], physiological and cognitive outcomes [ 26 , 27 ]. CM experiences that span several developmental periods, including both early and later childhood stages, predict a cascade of internalizing and externalizing symptoms in childhood that eventuate in greater symptoms of anxiety, depression, substance use disorder, and antisocial personality disorder in emerging adulthood [ 28 ].…”

Negative affect provides a context for increased distrust in the daily lives of individuals with a history of childhood maltreatment

“…Most prominently, current mood has an effect on emotion recognition (Schiffenbauer, 1974; Schmid & Schmid Mast, 2010). In addition, variations of paradigms that were previously used to study threat sensitivity in general, like the threat of predictable and unpredictable aversive events (the NPU threat task; A. Schmitz & Grillon, 2012) or the Posner spatial orienting paradigm (Posner, 1980; Raymond et al., 2021), could be used to differentiate the effects of general threat sensitivity from interpersonal threat sensitivity by introducing interpersonal stimuli into the experimental design.…”

‘Doctor, I am so stressed out!’ A descriptive study of biological, psychological, and socioemotional markers of stress in individuals who self-identify as being ‘very stressed out’ or ‘zen’

“…We used an overt recruitment method based on a protocol described by Foroughi et al (2016) which was also used in some of our previous studies with individuals exposed to early adversity ( Raymond et al 2021a , 2021b ). More precisely, participants self-selected themselves into one of two groups (‘very stressed out’ versus ‘zen’ individuals) by answering one of two recruitment ads for ‘very stressed out’ ( ‘Are you very stressed out?…”