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Summary
Adverse experiences – such as abuse and neglect – occurring during childhood and adolescence are found to predict poorer cognitive functioning. Social adversities, including bullying and social exclusion, are likely to be particularly salient during adolescence. Our understanding of how social adversities co-occur in adolescence and how they predict cognitive functioning is limited, however. We here examined the co-occurrence of social adversities using latent profile analysis and their relationship to cognitive outcomes later in development. We conducted analyses in the UK Household Longitudinal Study (UKHLS; N=493) and then replicated in the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC; N=14,856) cohort. Adolescents clustered into four profiles in both cohorts: low adversity, peer difficulties, sibling bullying and poly-adversity. There were no significant differences in cognitive functioning between profiles in the UKHLS cohort. In ALSPAC, lower working memory, non-verbal reasoning, and verbal fluency performance was found in adolescents in the poly-adversity profile compared to the low adversity profile. Working memory and verbal fluency performance was lower in the sibling bullying profile compared to peer difficulties and low adversity profiles, respectively. The findings demonstrate high co-occurrence of social adversities in adolescence, and that social support should be directed to early adolescence.
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Open Access
CC-By Attribution 4.0 International