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Associations between early life adversity and executive function in children adopted internationally from orphanages.

ABSTRACT: Executive function (EF) abilities are increasingly recognized as an important protective factor for children experiencing adversity, promoting better stress and emotion regulation as well as social and academic adjustment. We provide evidence that early life adversity is associated with significant reductions in EF performance on a developmentally sensitive battery of laboratory EF tasks that measured cognitive flexibility, working memory, and inhibitory control. Animal models also suggest that early adversity has a negative impact on the development of prefrontal cortex-based cognitive functions. In this study, we report EF performance 1 y after adoption in 2.5- to 4-y-old children who had experienced institutional care in orphanages overseas compared with a group of age-matched nonadopted children. To our knowledge, this is the youngest age and the soonest after adoption that reduced EF performance has been shown using laboratory measures in this population. EF reductions in performance were significant above and beyond differences in intelligence quotient. Within the adopted sample, current EF was associated with measures of early deprivation after controlling for intelligence quotient, with less time spent in the birth family before placement in an institution and lower quality of physical/social care in institutions predicting poorer performance on the EF battery.

SUBMITTER: Hostinar CE

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3477377 | biostudies-literature | 2012 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Associations between early life adversity and executive function in children adopted internationally from orphanages.

Hostinar Camelia E CE Stellern Sarah A SA Schaefer Catherine C Carlson Stephanie M SM Gunnar Megan R MR

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 20121009

Executive function (EF) abilities are increasingly recognized as an important protective factor for children experiencing adversity, promoting better stress and emotion regulation as well as social and academic adjustment. We provide evidence that early life adversity is associated with significant reductions in EF performance on a developmentally sensitive battery of laboratory EF tasks that measured cognitive flexibility, working memory, and inhibitory control. Animal models also suggest that ...[more]

PMID: 23047689

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Project description:AimAt arrival in new home country, internationally adopted children often have intestinal parasites. International adoptees also exhibit more behavioral problems than their biological peers. We examined whether intestinal parasite infections in international adoptees on arrival in Finland are associated with their later behavioral and emotional problems.MethodsData for this study were sourced from the Finnish Adoption Study (FinAdo) based on parental questionnaires for all internationally adopted children under 18 years (n = 1450) who arrived in Finland from 1985 to 2007. A total of 1293 families provided sufficient information on the adoptee's background, parasitic status on arrival, and behavioral symptoms at the median time of 5 years after arrival (mean age = 7.8 years). Behavioral and emotional disorders were evaluated with the Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL). Statistical analyses were conducted using linear regression.ResultsOf the 1293 families, parents of 206 adoptive children reported intestinal parasites in their adopted children on arrival. Parasite-infected children had subsequently higher CBCL problem scores than the children without parasites (p < 0.001). The association between intestinal parasites and later behavioral problems was stronger than that between intestinal parasites and any other factors measured in this study, except disability.LimitationsThe control group was naturally provided by the adopted children without parasite infections, but we could not compare the adopted children to non-adopted children without a defined parasite infection. We were unable to specify the effects associated with a specific parasite type. It was not possible either to include multiple environmental factors that could have been associated with behavioral problems in the models, which indicated only modest explanatory values.ConclusionsIn this study, intestinal parasite infections in early childhood may be associated with children's later psychological wellbeing, even in children who move to a country with a low prevalence of parasites. Our findings may support further developments pertaining to the gut-brain theory.

Dataset Information

Associations between early life adversity and executive function in children adopted internationally from orphanages.

Publications

Associations between early life adversity and executive function in children adopted internationally from orphanages.

Similar Datasets

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