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Adolescents’ dating violence is a public health concern due to its damaging consequences on the wellbeing of individuals involved and the possible risk of progression into adulthood. Previous studi...

BACKGROUND: The dominant view based on the deficit model of developmental psychopathology is that early adverse rearing impairs cognition. In contrast, an emerging evolutionary-developmental model argues that individuals exposed to early-life stress may have improved cognitive abilities that are adapted to harsh environments. We set out to test this hypothesis by examining cognitive functions in parentally deprived children in Nigeria. METHODS: Cognitive performance was compared between 53 deprived children who currently live in institutional homes and foster families and 51 nondeprived control participants. We used a multifaceted neurocognitive test battery for the assessment of inhibition, set-shifting and working memory. RESULTS: Results showed that the deprived and nondeprived group did not significantly differ in their performance on set-shifting and inhibition tasks. Conversely, the deprived group performed significantly better than the nondeprived group in the working memory task. DISCUSSION: We interpret the enhanced working memory ability of the deprived group as a correlate of its ecological relevance. In Nigeria, underprivileged children may need to rely to a larger extent on working memory abilities to attain success through academic work. This study provides further evidence that exposure to early adversity does not necessarily impair cognitive functions but can even enhance it under some conditions and in some domains. ispartof: JOURNAL OF CHILD PSYCHOLOGY AND PSYCHIATRY vol:62 issue:3 pages:280-288 ispartof: location:England status: published

SummaryBackground: Early-life adversity is associated with adverse mental health outcomes and poorer cognitive functioning in later development. However, little is known about how early-life adversity, mental health and cognition affect one another or how the effects unfold over time. In a unique longitudinal sample, we use a path model approach to study whether poorer mental health in childhood may mediate the effects of early-life adversity on later cognitive outcomes.Methods: We used 5-wave longitudinal data from the Millennium Cohort Study, a British population study that prospectively sampled children born between September 1, 2000 and January 11, 2002. We used data collected when the children were aged 3, 5, 7, 11 and 14. Information on exposure to adverse childhood experiences and mental health were provided by parents, while the children completed two cognitive tasks and additional mental health questionnaires at ages 11 and 14. A global adversity score was extracted from multiple adverse childhood experiences collected in the study using Principal Component Analysis. Total errors in a working memory task and total correct number of words in a vocabulary task were the principal cognitive outcomes. Total scores on the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire were modeled as mediators.Findings: The sample consisted of 13,287 children (Male = 6,712, Female = 6,575) who completed the working memory task at age 11 and 11,726 children (Male = 5,884, Female = 5,842) who completed a vocabulary task at age 14. We found a significant total association between global adversity and poorer performance on working memory (β = 0.116, p < 0.001 [95%CI 0.098, 0.134]) and vocabulary scores (β = -0.112, p < 0.001, [95% CI-0.130, -0.094]) tasks. Notably, current and previous mental health mediated a substantial proportion (working memory: 59%; vocabulary: ¬65%), of these effects. Our analysis showed that adversity has an enduring adverse effect on mental health, and that poorer mental health is associated with poorer cognitive performance later on in development. Moreover, the adverse effects of mental health were cumulative: poor mental health early on is associated with poorer cognitive scores up to 11 years later, above and beyond contemporaneous mental health.Interpretations: Children who experience early-life adversity are more likely to suffer from poorer mental health, which in turn is associated with poorer cognitive performance in adolescence. Our findings highlight at least one potential mechanism through which early-life adversity leads to poorer cognitive outcomes: Prolonged periods of poor mental health may have lasting, partially cumulative effects on working memory and vocabulary. These findings have important potential clinical and educational implications, because they suggest that academic and cognitive resilience may be supported through early mental health interventions in vulnerable children. Funding: TN is supported by the Cambridge Trust (University of Cambridge). ALVH is supported by Royal Society, and the Social Safety and Resilience programme at Leiden University. RAK was supported by Rogier A. Kievit, Medical Research Council (http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100000265), Award ID: SUAG/047 G101400 and a Hypatia Fellowship (Radboud University).

Background: Chronic consumption of alcohol and marijuana, especially when initiated at an early age, has been implicated in cognitive alterations in the domain of executive functioning. Despite the robustness of this finding in Western populations, its generalizability to other cultural contexts is largely unknown. In this study, we examined whether the regular use of alcohol or marijuana use relates to impaired executive functioning in male students of a Nigerian university. Methods: Chronic alcohol users (n = 39), chronic marijuana users (n = 35) and drug-abstinent control participants (n = 40) recruited through snow-ball sampling technique completed a computerized version of the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (cWCST). As an established measure of executive functioning, the cWCST allows for the simultaneous assessment of three distinct executive processes: set shifting, rule inference, and set maintenance. Results revealed a selective set-shifting deficit in both alcohol and marijuana users. Results: Both groups committed significantly more perseverative errors than the control group, and group differences were significantly stronger on this indicator of set shifting than on indicators of rule inference or set maintenance. Conclusions: Our findings support the generalizability of drug-related deficits in executive functioning and contribute to the characterization of executive dysfunction in non-Western populations. Future longitudinal studies are required to clarify whether executive dysfunction is an antecedent or consequence of alcohol and marijuana use in young Nigerians. ispartof: SUBSTANCE USE & MISUSE vol:55 issue:7 pages:1199-1202 ispartof: location:England status: published

This study used a novel approach that combined the latency and accuracy scores to examine the relative involvement of inhibition and working memory in two measures of cognitive flexibility - mixing cost and switch cost in 110 Nigerian adolescents. Results showed that inhibition was significantly associated with switch cost. On the other hand, working memory was negatively associated with mixing cost. These findings support the assumptions that cognitive flexibility skills are dependent on inputs from inhibition and working memory processes. Inhibition is involved in the deactivation of irrelevant stimuli during switching trials while working memory is essential to maintain the current rule in sets that require no shifting.

The present studies examined the associations that narcissism, Machiavellianism, psychopathy, sadism, and spitefulness had with the competitive and dangerous social worldviews as well as the possibility that these worldviews may explain, at least in part, the associations that these dark personality features had with the ideological attitudes of social dominance orientation (SDO) and right-wing authoritarianism (RWA). Across three studies (N = 2,103), we found the dark personality features to be positively associated with the competitive social worldview in Studies 1 and 3 but these associations were much weaker in Study 2. Narcissism, psychopathy, and spitefulness had indirect associations with the dominance and anti-egalitarianism aspects of SDO through the competitive social worldview in Study 3 but not in Study 2. In contrast, the dark personality features had, at best, weak associations with the dangerous social worldview as well as divergent associations with aspects of RWA. More specifically, narcissism and spitefulness were positively associated with aspects of RWA but psychopathy was negatively associated with RWA. Discussion focuses on the role that social worldviews – especially perceptions of the world as being a highly competitive environment – may play in the connections that dark personality features have with various outcomes including ideological attitudes.