Childhood maltreatment linked to poorer cognitive performance in young adulthood and later midlife

A new longitudinal study found that individuals who were maltreated as children tended to have poorer performance on cognitive tasks assessing general intelligence, abstract visual reasoning, processing speed, and set-shifting in young adulthood and later midlife. The paper was published in Neuropsychology.

Childhood maltreatment refers to harmful experiences during childhood such as physical abuse, emotional abuse, sexual abuse, neglect, or exposure to chronic conflict or violence. It disrupts a child’s sense of safety and can interfere with normal emotional and brain development. Children who are maltreated often struggle to form secure attachments with caregivers because those caregivers are sometimes the source of fear or unpredictability.

Maltreatment can lead to long-term problems with emotion regulation, making children more vulnerable to anxiety and depression, and more prone to aggressive behaviors. It also affects cognitive development, sometimes reducing attention, working memory, and school performance. Chronic stress from maltreatment alters biological stress systems, especially cortisol regulation. These changes can increase the risk of both mental and physical health problems later in life.

Childhood maltreatment is strongly associated with difficulties in forming healthy romantic and social relationships in adulthood. Neglect, the most common form, involves failing to meet a child’s basic emotional or physical needs. Emotional abuse, which includes humiliation and constant criticism, can be as damaging as physical abuse. Sexual abuse has particularly severe and enduring effects on trust and self-esteem.

Study author Molly Maxfield and her colleagues wanted to examine the links between childhood maltreatment and cognitive functioning into late midlife. They used data from a longitudinal prospective study noting that previous analyses of data from it indicated that individuals with a history of childhood maltreatment tended to have lower reading ability and estimated intelligence quotients in young adulthood.

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The study in question enrolled children with evidence of physical abuse, sexual abuse, or neglect processed from 1967 to 1971 in the county juvenile (family) or adult criminal courts of a midwestern metropolitan area. The cases of abuse and neglect considered for this study were restricted to children aged 0–11 years at the time. In total, the study group included 908 maltreated children. They were matched with a control group of 667 children without documented histories of abuse.

Subsequent activities of this study involved locating and interviewing participants again on several occasions between 1989 and 2023. The current study is based on the data from this period. The total number of participants dropped from the initial number to 1,196 in 1989–1995 and to only 447 in the 2022–2023 data collection.

Data were collected by interviewing participants in their homes or another quiet location of participants’ choosing. Interviewers were unaware of the purpose of the study and of whether the participants they were interviewing had a history of abuse and neglect. In the scope of these interviews, study participants completed a series of cognitive tests, and in the final wave, a brief self-report screening for dementia.

Results showed that participants who were maltreated as children tended to have poorer performance on a number of cognitive tests (all tests used except Stroop). They also showed a steeper decline in performance on tasks involving reading ability and set-shifting as they aged.

“The effects of childhood maltreatment on cognitive functioning continue into late midlife, with worse performance on tasks assessing general intelligence, abstract visual reasoning, processing speed, and set-shifting compared with controls**,”** study authors concluded.

The study sheds light on the links between childhood maltreatment and cognitive functioning in adulthood. However, it should be noted that the design of the study does not allow any definitive causal inferences to be derived from the results.

The paper, “Childhood Maltreatment and Cognitive Functioning From Young Adulthood to Late Midlife: A Prospective Study,” was authored by Molly Maxfield, Kellie Courtney, Stephanie Assuras, Jennifer J. Manly, and Cathy Spatz Widom.