The cognitive costs and advantages of children's exposure to parental relationship instability: Testing an evolutionary-developmental hypothesis.

ABSTRACT: Guided by evolutionary-developmental models, this study tested the hypothesis that children's exposure to parental relationship instability, defined by initiation and dissolution of caregiver intimate relationships, has both costs in cognitive impairments and benefits in enhanced learning skills. Participants included 243 mothers and their preschool children (M age 4.60 years; 56% girls) from diverse racial and ethnic backgrounds (e.g., 46% Black; 19% Latinx). Consistent with hypotheses, higher levels of parental relationship instability during preschool predicted children's poorer performance on explicit, higher-order cognitive functioning tasks (e.g., IQ, working memory) and better performance in detecting reward probabilities in an implicit learning task 2 years later. Res

SUBMITTER: Davies PT 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9614667 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature