Childhood neglect has a greater cognitive impact than once thought

Childhood maltreatment, and in particular the neglect of children, is associated with greater cognitive difficulties than previously thought, new research has found.

 

The research suggests that the overreliance on retrospective self-reports of maltreatment in research has resulted in a biased evidence base that overlooks the challenges faced by children and young people with documented exposure to maltreatment.

 

Researchers from the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience (IoPPN) at King’s College London and City University of New York tested the relative associations of court-documented exposure to, and adult recall of, childhood maltreatment with cognitive abilities within the same individuals. 

 

Of the 1179 participants who took part in the research, those with official records of childhood maltreatment showed, on average, cognitive deficits across most tests undertaken compared to those without records. 

 

In contrast, the participants who retrospectively self-reported maltreatment did not demonstrate deficits when compared with those without reports.

 

Researchers also noted that these findings were not consistent across the different types of maltreatment. Participants who had documented experiences of neglect demonstrated cognitive deficits, but those who had documented experiences of physical and sexual abuse did not.

 

“Our study has shown that this reliance on retrospective reports has likely resulted in researchers and clinicians underestimating the extent to which individuals with documented cases of maltreatment, and particularly neglect, are experiencing cognitive deficits,” co author Professor Andrea Danese of  King’s IoPPN said. 

 

More research is needed to understand why individuals with documented histories of neglect have cognitive deficits. The researchers suspect this might be due to a lack of stimulation in childhood, the familial transmission of cognitive challenges, and/or the role of other experiences that often accompany neglect, such as family poverty. 

 

Disentangling the mechanisms underlying the observed associations will provide helpful insights to develop effective interventions.

 

“Objective and subjective experiences of childhood maltreatment and their relationships with cognitive deficits: a cohort study in the USA” (Andrea Danese, Cathy Spatz Widom) was published in Lancet Psychiatry and can be accessed here.