Cognitive deficits and enhancements in youth from adverse conditions

Today, I present information from an article I found methodologically intriguing. Vermeent, Young, DeJoseph, Schubert & Frankenhuis (2024) published “Cognitive Deficits and Enhancements in Youth from Adverse Conditions: An integrative assessment using Drift Diffusion Modeling in the ABCD study” in Developmental Science. Here are the edited abstract and conclusion:

Childhood adversity can lead to cognitive deficits or enhancements, depending on many factors. Though progress has been made, two challenges prevent us from integrating and better understanding these patterns. First, studies commonly use and interpret raw performance differences, such as response times, which conflate different stages of cognitive processing. Second, most studies either isolate or aggregate abilities, obscuring the degree to which individual differences reflect task-general (shared) or task-specific (unique) processes. We addressed these challenges using Drift Diffusion Modeling (DDM) and structural equation modeling (SEM). Leveraging a large, representative sample of 9–10 year-olds from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) study, we examined how two forms of adversity—material deprivation and household threat—were associated with performance on tasks measuring processing speed, inhibition, attention shifting, and mental rotation. Using DDM, we decomposed performance on each task into three distinct stages of processing: speed of information uptake, response caution, and stimulus encoding/response execution. Using SEM, we isolated task-general and task-specific variances in each processing stage and estimated their associations with the two forms of adversity. Youth with more exposure to household threat (but not material deprivation) showed slower task-general processing speed, but showed intact task-specific abilities. In addition, youth with more exposure to household threat tended to respond more cautiously in general. These findings suggest that traditional assessments might overestimate the extent to which childhood adversity reduces specific abilities. By combining DDM and SEM approaches, we can develop a more nuanced understanding of how adversity affects different aspects of youth's cognitive performance.

Taken together, we find that adversity is mostly associated with task-general processes, as well as ability-irrelevant response caution, yet that task-specific abilities are mostly intact. This suggests that traditional cognitive assessments may overestimate the effect of adversity on youth's specific abilities (both impairments and enhancements). Our analytical approach provides a solution. By combining DDM and SEM approaches, we can start to develop a more nuanced understanding of how adversity affects different aspects of cognitive performance among youth and across development. This approach requires large datasets containing multiple cognitive tasks, a requirement that is increasingly feasible with the availability of large, secondary datasets in developmental science (Kievit et al., 2022). Thus, we can develop a more balanced, well-rounded understanding of how adversity shapes cognitive development that integrates both deficit and adaptation perspectives.

This is mostly relevant to those who test, but may also be helpful to those who treat youth who have had adverse experiences. It makes sense to me that most current methods conflate the stages of information processing necessary to complete cognitive tasks. The distinction between task-general and task-specific performance is also helpful. I find it fascinating that, in this sample, material deprivation has less of an impact than household threat. In addition, the impact of household threat is greater for task-general processes than task-specific abilities and fosters caution that is unrelated to ability. This entire article should be available if you want more information.