Associations between early life adversity and executive function in children adopted internationally from orphanages.

ABSTRACT: Executive function (EF) abilities are increasingly recognized as an important protective factor for children experiencing adversity, promoting better stress and emotion regulation as well as social and academic adjustment. We provide evidence that early life adversity is associated with significant reductions in EF performance on a developmentally sensitive battery of laboratory EF tasks that measured cognitive flexibility, working memory, and inhibitory control. Animal models also suggest that early adversity has a negative impact on the development of prefrontal cortex-based cognitive functions. In this study, we report EF performance 1 y after adoption in 2.5- to 4-y-old children who had experienced institutional care in orphanages overseas compared with a group of age-matched nonadopte

SUBMITTER: Hostinar CE 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3477377 | biostudies-literature | 2012 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature