Comparison of three models of adverse childhood experiences: Associations with child and adolescent internalizing and externalizing symptoms.

Abstract

Exposure to adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) is prevalent and confers risk for psychopathology later in life. Approaches to understanding the impact of ACEs on development include the independent risk approach, the Dimensional Model of Adversity and Psychopathology (DMAP) distinguishing between threat and deprivation events, and the cumulative risk approach. The present research provides an empirical confirmation of DMAP and a comparison of these three approaches in predicting internalizing and externalizing symptoms in youth. In Study 1, mental health professionals (N = 57) rated ACEs as threat or deprivation events. These ratings were used to create composites to represent the DMAP approach in Study 2. With cross-sectional and longitudinal data from children and adolescents in state custody (N = 23,850), hierarchical linear regression analyses examined independent risk, DMAP, and cumulative risk models in predicting internalizing symptoms, disinhibited externalizing symptoms, and antagonistic externalizing symptoms. All three approaches produced significant models and revealed associations between exposure to ACEs and symptoms. Individual risk accounted for significantly more variance in symptoms than cumulative risk and DMAP. Cumulative risk masked differential associations between ACEs and psychological symptoms found in the individual risk and DMAP approaches.

Impact of dimensions of early adversity on adult health and functioning: A 2-decade, longitudinal study

“…Early exposure to threat has been found to contribute specifically to the proximal outcome, emotion regulation, when measured by attention to emotional faces and fMRI results from mood induction paradigms (Gold et al, 2016;McCrory et al, 2013;McLaughlin et al, 2015;Pollak & Tolley-Schell, 2003). However, as theorized, specificity becomes mixed when general psychiatric problem types are measured as outcomes (Henry et al, 2021;Miller et al, 2018. Results from Miller et al (2018 support their hypotheses, finding that although deprivation and threat both uniquely contributed to broad-band externalizing symptoms, only deprivation was mediated by cognitive functioning mechanisms (language).…”

Individual and environmental correlates of childhood maltreatment and exposure to community violence: Utilizing a latent profile and a multilevel meta-analytic approach

“…Although some research finds that adversity total score (i.e. sum across various forms) predicts greater dysfunction (Felitti et al, 1998), recent evidence using the ACE framework suggests that specific types of adversity differentially relate to correlates and that considering the type of adversity accounts for more variance in correlates than total score approaches (Henry et al, 2021; Negriff, 2020). Furthermore, most research examines CM and ETV primarily using variable-centered statistics (Morin, Bujacz, & Gagné, 2018), which generate a single set of parameters that characterizes the whole population homogeneously (Howard & Hoffman, 2018) in terms of their CM and ETV experiences.…”

Talking to Parents about Spanking: The Potential for Pediatricians to Reduce the Impact of Adverse Childhood Experiences

“…Similar to spanking, ACEs contribute to short-term negative consequences for children, such as greater problem behavior. 13,14 This new study documents a striking parallel between the effects of spanking and other ACEs on externalizing behavior problems, strengthening the case for considering spanking itself as another ACE. 15 Apart from referencing the violation of children's rights, the new study underscores that spanking-independent of other ACEsis associated with increases in children's externalizing symptoms, although not with increases in internalizing problems.…”