Abusive childhood linked with more cognitive difficulties than estimated: Study

Experiencing abuse as a child is related to more cognitive difficulties as an adult than previously thought, a new study has suggested.

Researchers said that difficulties in cognition or intellectual activity involving thinking, reasoning and memory, linked to childhood maltreatment, especially neglect, have been "grossly underestimated in previous studies".

This is because of biases in previous studies resulting from overly relying on accounts of participants who self-reported abuse from recall, which might be prone to effects of memory and subjective appraisal, said the authors, including those from King's College, London.

"While there are some important exceptions, most research in this area has relied on retrospective reports of childhood maltreatment from adult participants. Our study has shown that this reliance on retrospective reports has likely resulted in researchers and clinicians underestimating the extent to which individuals with documented cases of maltreatment, and particularly neglect, are experiencing cognitive deficits," said co-author Andrea Danese, a professor of child and adolescent psychiatry at King's College London.

Cognitive deficits

In this study, published in the journal Lancet Psychiatry, the researchers compared the cognitive abilities of adults having official records of childhood abuse and those reporting abusive experiences from recall.

The authors found that on an average, the adults having official records of childhood maltreatment showed cognitive deficits across most tests undertaken as part of the research, compared to those having no official records.

Further, the participants who self-reported abuse from memory did not demonstrate deficits in cognition, when compared with those without reports, the team found.

"Our study highlights the importance of identifying young people who have experienced neglect so that the proper support can be put in place, for example, to mitigate the negative consequences in education and employment," Danese said.

More research is needed to understand why individuals with documented histories of neglect have cognitive deficits, the authors said.

(With inputs from agencies)