The adversity early in life (such as poverty, illness, or family conflict) have long been linked to mental health problems and poorer cognitive functioning as children get older. However, the way in which these factors interact and evolve over time was unknown until now.
Influence through mental health
A new study carried out by the University of Cambridge and Nigerian researchers has shed light on the interrelation between these phenomenafinding that psychological problems in childhood are related to worse cognitive performance in later stages of life.
How they publish in the specialized media Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatryto reach this conclusion they analyzed data from the Millenium Cohort Studycurrently underway, which collects information on 13,287 children at the ages of three, five, seven, eleven and fourteen years based on a series of tests. Based on this, they established a series of measures on adversity in early childhood (before three years), mental health and cognitive functioning.
Using statistical analysis, they found that childhood adversity appears to influence later cognitive performance through its impact on mental health throughout childhood. For example, the most impaired mental health between the ages of three and fourteen as a result of early childhood adversity explained 59% of the variance in a lower working memory performance at age 11 and explained 70% of the worst performance with vocabulary at 14 years of age.
In fact, early adversity was considered a very important predictor of a worse mental health between the ages of 3 and 14with a more robust association at three years.
References
Tochukwu Nweze et al. Childhood mental health difficulties mediate the long-term association between early-life adversity at age 3 and poorer cognitive functioning at ages 11 and 14. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry (2023) DOI: 10.1111/jcpp.13757