Learning the value of environmental signals and using that information to guide behavior is critical for survival. Stress in childhood may influence these processes, but how it does so is still unclear. This study examined how stressful event exposures and perceived social isolation affect the ability to learn value signals and use that…

Early life stress (ELS) is associated with lower IQ and academic achievement; however, it remains unclear whether it additionally explains their discrepancy. In 2,401 children (54% girls, 30.2% migration background) from the population-based study Generation R Study, latent factors of prenatal and postnatal (age 0-10) ELS were estimated, and…

This preregistered study examined whether child temperament and executive functions moderated the longitudinal association between early life stress (ELS) and behavior problems. In a Dutch population-based cohort (n = 2803), parents reported on multiple stressors (age 0-6 years), child temperament (age 5), and executive functions (age 4), and…

Verbally reported long-term memory for past events typically improves with age. However, such findings are based exclusively on studies, where children are directly asked to recall. The present study showed that when 3- (n = 113, 59 girls) and 4-year-olds (n = 113, 62 girls), predominantly White, were brought back to a distinct laboratory-setting…

This paper estimates the acute effect of community-level homicides on early childhood language development and explores the moderating role of maternal efficacy and satisfaction in Chile. It uses data from the 2017 wave of the Early Childhood Longitudinal Survey of Chilean Children (N = 1194, M[subscript age]: 52.8 months, 52% girls). Children in…

Adversity-exposed youth tend to score lower on cognitive tests. However, the hidden talents approach proposes some abilities are enhanced by adversity, especially under ecologically relevant conditions. Two versions of an attention-shifting and working memory updating task--one abstract, one ecological--were administered to 618 youth (M[subscript…

The cognitive functioning of children who experience intimate partner violence (IPV) has received less attention than their emotional-behavioral outcomes. Drawing upon data from 615 (48.4% female) 10-year-old Australian-born children and their mothers (9.6% of mothers born in non-English speaking countries) participating in a community-based…

Although many immigrant children to the United States arrive with their parents, a notable proportion are first separated and later reunited with their parents. How do the experiences of separation and reunification shape the well-being of immigrant children? Data were from a national survey of legal adult immigrants and their families, the New…

The impacts of war and displacement on executive function (EF)--what we might call the cognitive signatures of "minds under siege"--are little known. We surveyed a gender-balanced sample of 12- to 18-year-old Syrian refugees (n = 240) and Jordanian non-refugees (n = 210) living in Jordan. We examined the relative contributions of…

The aim of this study was to determine how trajectory clusters of social status (social preference and perceived popularity) and behavior (direct aggression and prosocial behavior) from age 9 to age 14 predicted adolescents' bullying participant roles at age 16 and 17 (n = 266). Clusters were identified with multivariate growth mixture modeling…

Accumulating evidence suggests that early adversity is linked to methylation of the glucocorticoid receptor (GR) gene, "NR3C1," which is a key regulator of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis. Yet no prior work has considered the contribution of methylation of "NR3C1" to emerging behavior problems and psychopathology in…

Early-life exposures are critical for later child cognitive development. McCarthy Scales of Children's Abilities (MSCA) were used to assess cognitive development of 700 preschoolers (M[subscript age] = 4.2 years), derived from the "Rhea" birth cohort, in Greece. Principal component analysis (PCA) was applied on prospectively collected…

Cognitive deficits have been reported in children who experienced early neglect, especially children raised in institutionalized settings. Previous research suggests that early neglect may differentially affect the directional organization of white matter in the prefrontal cortex (PFC). This may be one mechanism to explain cognitive deficits…

Although epidemiological data provide evidence that early life experience plays a critical role in human development, the mechanism of how this works remains in question. Recent data from human and animal literature suggest that epigenetic changes, such as DNA methylation, are involved not only in cellular differentiation but also in the…

This study assesses the consequences of housing instability during the first 5 years of a child's life for a host of school readiness outcomes. Using data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study (n = 2,810), this study examines the relation between multiple moves and children's language and literacy and behavior problems at…