Cognitive adaptations to stressful environments
When childhood adversity enhances adult executive function
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 6201620 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Chiraag Mittal (University of Minnesota System), Vladas Griskevicius (University of Minnesota System), Jeffry A Simpson (0000-0003-1899-2493, University of Minnesota System), Sooyeon Sung (0000-0001-8557-1168, University of Minnesota System), Ethan S Young (0000-0002-8232-0184, University of Minnesota System) |
| Year | 2015 |
| Volume | 109 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 604-621 |
| Publication date | 2015-10-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0022-3514 • E-ISSN: 1939-1315 |
| Publisher | American Psychological Association (APA) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1037/pspi0000028 |
| PMID | 26414842 |
| OpenAlex | W2272950013 |
| Language | FR |
| Citations received | 92 |
| References cited | 41 |
Can growing up in a stressful childhood environment enhance certain cognitive functions? Drawing participants from higher-income and lower-income backgrounds, we tested how adults who grew up in harsh or unpredictable environments fared on 2 types of executive function tasks: inhibition and shifting. People who experienced unpredictable childhoods performed worse at inhibition (overriding dominant responses), but performed better at shifting (efficiently switching between different tasks). This finding is consistent with the notion that shifting, but not inhibition, is especially useful in unpredictable environments. Importantly, differences in executive function between people who experienced unpredictable versus predictable childhoods emerged only when they were tested in uncertain contexts. This catalyst suggests that some individual differences related to early life experience are manifested under conditions of uncertainty in adulthood. Viewed as a whole, these findings indicate that adverse childhood environments do not universally impair mental functioning, but can actually enhance specific types of cognitive performance in the face of uncertainty
Cognition · Cognitive psychology · Developmental psychology · Executive functions · Face (sociological concept) · Function (biology) · Child and Adolescent Psychosocial and Emotional Development · Early Childhood Education and Development · Psychology · Social Psychology · Stress Responses and Cortisol
Cycling on the fast track
Childhood harshness predicts long-lasting leader preferences
Life history strategy and human cooperation in economic games
Incorporating language brokering experiences into bilingualism research
Trajectories of cognitive flexibility through kindergarten and first grade
The executive function-related learning and practicing activity analysis tool (EFRLPAAT)
Developmental trajectories of adolescent problematic mobile phone use and their longitudinal associations with intolerance of uncertainty and distress tolerance
Creativity in Children Growing Up in Dysfunctional Families
Life History Theory
Developmental Adaptation to Stress
Unity and diversity of executive functions
Beyond Risk and Protective Factors
The Strengths of People in Poverty
Money in the Mental Lives of the Poor
The Light vs. Dark Triad of Personality
Cognition in harsh and unpredictable environments
Long-Lasting Sex-Specific Effects Based On Emotion- and Cognition-Related Behavioral Assessment of Adult Rats After Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder From Different Lengths of Maternal Separation
Pain catastrophizing, pain sensitivity and fear of pain are associated with early life environmental unpredictability
Childhood Maltreatment Impacts Cognitive Function in Emerging Adulthood
Adverse Childhood Experiences and Self-Perceived Success among Young Indian Adults
Adaptation and validation of the Chinese versions of the childhood perceived poverty and wealth questionnaire(C‐CPPWQ) and the childhood perceived unpredictability questionnaire (C‐CPUQ)
Trajectory of problematic smartphone use among adolescents aged 10–18 years
The Value of Dimensional Models of Early Experience
Cash, crowds, and cooperation
Theory and measurement of environmental unpredictability
Individual Heterogeneity of Smokers’ Cigarette Cravings When Facing Environmental Stress
Attentional control as a double-edged sword
Reciprocal relation between resilience and executive function in Chinese children
The effect of stereotype threat on females’ spatial perspective taking and the mediating role of executive functions
Understanding the relationship between early life adversity and depressive symptoms
Relationships between early life adversity and depressive symptoms in adolescents
Different adversity is differently related to trust in different people cross-culturally and in China
Further tests of the scarcity and luxury hypotheses in dispositional greed
Childhood Environmental Unpredictability and Experimentally Primed Uncertainty in Relation to Intuitive versus Deliberate Visual Search
The relationship between stressful childhood environments and depression for Chinese adolescents
Lethal versus reproductive disease appeals in preventive health advertising
Childhood Parent-Child Relationships and Cognitive Health in Later Life
Life History Strategies, Prestige, and Dominance
Preadolescents' executive functions and resilience development
Why do parents employ helicopter parenting in the post‐Covid‐19 era? An actor‐partner interdependence mediation model
Effects of Adverse Childhood Experiences on Creativity from Life History Theory
Socio‐Economic Status and Creativity
Annual Research Review
Testing different sources of environmental unpredictability on adolescent functioning
Each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way † – a call for clearer conceptualization of adverse family factors in biosocial research on child and adolescent mental health problems
Working for the future
Children leverage predictive representations for flexible, value-guided choice
Hidden talents in context
Childhood environmental unpredictability and hoarding
Impact of early environmental unpredictability on impulsive consumption
Negative time perspective predicts the self-perceived affective and physical components of pain independently from depression, anxiety, and early life circumstances
The Simon effect in bilingual language brokers
Financial scarcity is indirectly related to multiple aspects of executive function through stress and the strength of association depends on childhood poverty
The unbalanced theoretical toolkit
Stress-adapted teachers pave the way for stress-adapted students
How Children Invented Humanity
The behavioral ecology of moral dilemmas
Can an unpredictable childhood environment enhance working memory? Testing the sensitized-specialization hypothesis
Short-Term Mindsets and Crime
Belief in a just world mediates the relation between early life environmental unpredictability and poor cyber defending behavior in adolescence
Childhood emotional maltreatment and Internet addiction
Hikikomori Risk in the UK
Creative minds, equal ground
Early life environmental unpredictability and overeating
Early childhood adversity and Women’s sexual behavior
How Childhood Shapes Adolescents' Belief in Justice
Purpose maintained
The Material Context of Adolescent Identity Formation
Associations between early life harshness, parents' parenting style, and relationship quality in China
Selection and adaptation in human migration
A psychobioecological model to understand the income-food insecurity-obesity relationship
Evolutionary considerations on social status, eating behavior, and obesity
Harsh, unpredictable childhood environments are associated with inferior frontal gyrus connectivity and binge eating tendencies in late adolescents
Financial scarcity and cognitive performance
Further exploring the impact of cumulative lifetime adversity on life satisfaction, psychological flourishing, and depressive symptoms
Measurement of parental executive function in early childhood settings
Adverse Childhood Experiences Increase Peer Victimization among Early Adolescents
An uncertainty management perspective on long-run impacts of adversity
Honestly hungry
Punitive Parenting and Delinquency
Examining developmental plasticity in the skeletal system through a sensitive developmental windows framework
Factorial validity and measurement invariance of the Psychosocial Uncertainty Scale
Human Capital and Administrative Burden
Scarcity and the Mindsets of Social Welfare Recipients
Adverse childhood experiences, symptoms of anxiety and depression in adulthood
Incorporating language brokering experiences into bilingualism research
Effortful Control Development in the Face of Harshness and Unpredictability
Effects of childhood environments on the discernment of health misinformation
Enhanced Cognitive Flexibility in the Seminomadic Himba
The Diversifying Experience Model
Silver Spoons and Platinum Plans
From Cradle to Grave
Death, Hope and Sex
Executive Functioning and Mathematics Achievement
Executive Function
Relating Effortful Control, Executive Function, and False Belief Understanding to Emerging Math and Literacy Ability in Kindergarten
Costs of a predictible switch between simple cognitive tasks.
When the Economy Falters, Do People Spend or Save? Responses to Resource Scarcity Depend on Childhood Environments
The Nature and Organization of Individual Differences in Executive Functions
The Relations Among Inhibition and Interference Control Functions
Power failure
Inhibition and the right inferior frontal cortex
An Integrative Theory of Prefrontal Cortex Function
Individual differences in executive functions are almost entirely genetic in origin.
Dying young and living fast
Poverty Impedes Cognitive Function
Putting All Your Eggs in One Basket
Consilience and Life History Theory
Executive function in preschoolers
The Evolution of Adolescence and the Adolescence of Evolution
Cognitive skill performance among young children living in poverty
Adaptive patterns of stress responsivity
Organizational perspective on cognitive control functioning and cognitive-affective balance in maltreated children
Developmental trajectories in toddlers' self-restraint predict individual differences in executive functions 14 years later
The evolutionary basis of risky adolescent behavior
Evolution, stress, and sensitive periods
When do adaptive developmental mechanisms yield maladaptive outcomes
Beyond cumulative risk
Might Not Be a Tomorrow”
Ecological contingencies in women's calorie regulation psychology
A revised socioeconomic index of occupational status
The Unity and Diversity of Executive Functions and Their Contributions to Complex “Frontal Lobe” Tasks
Death, Hope, and Sex
How can you resist? Executive control helps romantically involved individuals to stay faithful
Environmental contingency in life history strategies
The influence of mortality and socioeconomic status on risk and delayed rewards
Boosting beauty in an economic decline
Sexually Selective Cognition
Sense of control under uncertainty depends on people’s childhood environment
Fundamental Dimensions of Environmental Risk
Effects of Harsh and Unpredictable Environments in Adolescence on Development of Life History Strategies
Timing of Pubertal Maturation in Girls
| Unique citing works | 92 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 9,2 |
| Citation span | 2016 - 2026 (11) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 87 |