New research from King’s College London’s Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience (IoPPN) and City University of New York suggests that previous studies have significantly underestimated the cognitive difficulties related to childhood maltreatment, particularly neglect.
Published in Lancet Psychiatry, the study highlights the potential bias in relying heavily on retrospective self-reports of maltreatment, which may fail to capture the full scope of cognitive challenges experienced by children who have faced documented maltreatment.
The researchers conducted a study on 1,179 participants from a U.S. cohort, comparing cognitive abilities in adulthood based on two measures: court-documented childhood maltreatment and participants’ retrospective self-reports of maltreatment.
The study aimed to assess the relative associations between these two forms of maltreatment data and cognitive performance within the same individuals, offering a clearer picture of how childhood experiences affect cognitive outcomes.
Results showed that participants with official records of childhood maltreatment exhibited cognitive deficits across most tests when compared to those without such records.
Surprisingly, participants who self-reported childhood maltreatment did not show these same cognitive deficits, suggesting that self-reported data might miss the extent of cognitive difficulties experienced by individuals who were maltreated as children.
Further analysis revealed that cognitive deficits were primarily associated with documented experiences of neglect rather than other forms of abuse, such as physical or sexual abuse. This finding highlights the particular vulnerability of individuals who experience neglect, pointing to the long-term cognitive consequences that this form of maltreatment may have.
The study’s authors emphasize the need to prioritize identifying and supporting individuals who have experienced childhood neglect. Professor Andrea Danese, a co-author, suggests that relying on retrospective reports has led to an underestimation of the cognitive deficits faced by these individuals.
More research is required to understand the mechanisms behind these deficits, which may stem from factors like a lack of childhood stimulation or family poverty, and to develop interventions that can mitigate the negative impact on education and employment outcomes.
