BackgroundThe mechanisms linking early‐life adversity with psychopathology over the life‐course are complex. In this prospective study, we collectively examined cognitive, affective, and developmental mediators previously found to individually link childhood threat and deprivation experiences to adolescent psychopathology to identify the most potent mechanisms.MethodsData came from a community sample of 227 children (mean child age 11.5 ± 0.5 years, 48.5% female) from the Seattle metro area with recruitment designed to reflect diversity in family income. Candidate mechanisms included self‐rated pubertal development and task‐measured attention bias to threat, emotion regulation, theory of mind, fear learning, inhibitory control, language ability, reasoning, and reward sensitivity. Using a high‐dimensional mediation approach, we determined which mediating pathways linking threat and deprivation to psychopathology persisted after controlling for all candidate mechanisms associated with psychopathology. Models additionally controlled for the child's age, sex, early‐childhood emotional and behavioral symptoms, poverty, and maternal depression.ResultsBlunted reward sensitivity mediated the prospective relationship between threat and internalizing psychopathology, explaining 17.25% (95% CI 1.08%, 69.96%) of this association. Advanced pubertal development was associated with increases in internalizing and externalizing symptoms (standardized associations of 0.16 (95% CI 0.03, 0.29) and 0.17 (95% CI 0.05, 0.29), respectively), but not with adversity. Although deprivation was strongly related to psychopathology, no mechanisms were empirically identified.ConclusionsIn a well‐characterized community sample, we isolated reward sensitivity as a robust mediator of the prospective association between early‐life threat and adolescent internalizing psychopathology. Interventions aimed at bolstering reward sensitivity may mitigate the impact of early‐life threat experiences on internalizing problems.

中文翻译：

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确定将威胁和剥夺与青少年精神病理学联系起来的认知、情感和发展机制


背景将早期生活逆境与生命过程中的精神病理学联系起来的机制很复杂。在这项前瞻性研究中，我们共同检查了先前发现的认知、情感和发展介质，这些介质分别将童年威胁和剥夺经历与青少年精神病理学联系起来，以确定最有效的机制。方法数据来自西雅图都会区 227 名儿童（平均儿童年龄 11.5 ± 0.5 岁，48.5% 为女性）的社区样本，招聘旨在反映家庭收入的多样性。候选机制包括自评的青春期发育和任务测量的对威胁的注意力偏差、情绪调节、心理理论、恐惧学习、抑制控制、语言能力、推理和奖励敏感性。使用高维中介方法，我们确定了在控制了与精神病理学相关的所有候选机制后，哪些将威胁和剥夺与精神病理学联系起来的中介途径仍然存在。模型还控制了孩子的年龄、性别、幼儿情绪和行为症状、贫困和产妇抑郁症。结果钝化的奖励敏感性介导了威胁与内化精神病理学之间的前瞻性关系，解释了 17.25% （95% CI 1.08%， 69.96%） 的这种关联。青春期发育晚期与内化和外化症状的增加相关 （标准化关联分别为 0.16 （95% CI 0.03， 0.29） 和 0.17 （95% CI 0.05， 0.29），但与逆境无关。尽管剥夺与精神病理学密切相关，但没有经验确定任何机制。结论在一个特征明确的社区样本中，我们分离出奖励敏感性作为早期生活威胁与青少年内化精神病理学之间预期关联的强大中介。旨在提高奖励敏感性的干预措施可能会减轻早期威胁经历对问题内化的影响。