Effects of Early Life Adversity on the Trajectoryof Executive Functioning Development

Abstract

This study examined the effects of different forms of early adversity, specifically, foster care and international adoption, on the development of children’s executive functioning capabilities. Executive functioning was measured using the Dimensional Change Card Sort (Beck, Schaefer, Pang, & Carlson, 2011) administered when the children were 36, 48, and 60 months old. To represent different conditions of early life adversity, foster children, children adopted internationally, and children from a low-risk community group were studied. The foster children and internationally adopted children represent early life adversity in the forms of instability, changing caregivers, and lack of attachment figures. Results showed that at 36 months of age all three groups displayed similar executive functioning capabilities. However, both children adopted internationally and low-risk children demonstrated improvements in executive functioning over time, demonstrating better capabilities at 48 and 60 months of age, compared to 36 months. Foster children also displayed an increase in executive functioning capabilities over time, but their abilities remained significantly lower than both the low-risk biological comparison group and internationally adopted group at both 48 and 60 months. These results suggest that early adversity places children at risk for lower executive functioning capabilities, but that an enhanced environment can remediate these effects.