Threat and deprivation are associated with distinct aspects of cognition, emotional processing, and psychopathology in children and adolescents

Abstract Exposure to childhood adversity has been consistently associated with poor developmental outcomes, but it is unclear whether these associations vary across different forms of adversity. We examined cross‐sectional and longitudinal associations between threat and deprivation with cognition, emotional processing, and psychopathology in a middle‐income country. The sample consisted of 2511 children and adolescents (6–17 years old) from the Brazilian High‐Risk Cohort for Mental Conditions. Parent reports on childhood adversity were used to construct adversity latent constructs. Psychopathology was measured by the Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL) to generate a measure of general psychopathology (the “p” factor). Executive function (EF) and attention orienting toward angry faces were assessed using cognitive tasks. All measures were acquired at two time‐points 3 years apart and associations were tested using general linear models. Higher levels of psychopathology were predicted by higher levels of threat cross‐sectionally and longitudinally, and by deprivation longitudinally. For EF, worse performance was associated only with deprivation at baseline and follow‐up. Finally, threat was associated with attention orienting towards angry faces cross‐sectionally, but neither form of adversity was associated with changes over time in attention bias. Our results suggest that threat and deprivation have differential associations with cognitive development and psychopathology. Exposure to adversity during childhood is a complex phenomenon with meaningful influences on child development. Because adversity can take many forms, dimensional models might help to disentangle the specific developmental correlates of different types of early experience. A video abstract of this article can be viewed at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uEU0L8exyTM .