Summary Background Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) and obesity are independently associated with brain/neurocognitive health. Despite a growing emphasis on the importance of early life adversity on health, the relationship between ACEs and neurocognition in adults with overweight/obesity is unclear. The objective was to examine associations between self‐reported ACEs and measured neurocognitive domains in a sample of adults with overweight/obesity. Methods Participants were 95 predominantly white, highly educated adult women (76% female, 81% Caucasian, and 75% ≥ bachelor's degree) with excess adiposity enrolled in the Cognitive and Self‐regulatory Mechanisms of Obesity Study. ACEs and fluid/crystallized neurocognitive domains were measured at baseline using the Adverse Childhood Experiences Scale and the NIH Toolbox Cognition Battery and Automated Neuropsychological Assessment Metric, respectively. Results Higher ACEs scores were negatively correlated with fluid cognition (r = −.34, P < .001) but not crystallized cognition (r = .01, ns). Individuals with 3 and 4+ ACEs displayed significantly lower fluid cognition scores than those with fewer ACEs F4,89 = 3.24, P < .05. After accounting for body mass index (BMI), age, sex, race, and education, higher ACEs scores were still associated with poorer performance on overall fluid cognition (β = −.36, P < .01), along with the following subtests: Stroop Colour/Word test (β = −.23, P < .05), Go/No‐Go omissions (β = .29, P < .01), and Picture Sequence Memory task (β = −.30, P < .01). Conclusions The role of ACEs in health may be related to their associations with executive function and episodic neurocognitive domains essential to cognitive processing and self‐regulation. Obesity science should further examine the role of ACEs and neurocognition in obesity prevention, prognosis, and treatment using more rigorous, prospective designs and more diverse samples.

High levels of maternal pregnancy-specific stress are associated with an increased risk for adverse birth outcomes as well as anxiety and depression symptoms during and following pregnancy. There is evidence that early childhood experiences play an important role in maternal psychological health and well-being and may be important for shaping maternal vulnerability to pregnancy-specific stress. The current study examined the link between both maternal adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) and protective and compensatory experiences (PACEs) and pregnancy-specific stress and considered the mediating and moderating roles of resilience on these associations. Data came from a high-risk clinic cohort of 138 racially diverse pregnant women (ages 16-38). We found that resilience mediated the associations between PACEs and pregnancy-specific stress and moderated the association between ACEs and pregnancy-specific stress. In particular, high levels of resilience were protective against pregnancy-specific stress at low and moderate levels of ACEs. The findings highlight the importance of early childhood experiences on women's well-being during pregnancy and demonstrate how both ACEs and PACEs contribute to and are protected by resilience.

No abstract

Resilience is a key characteristic to study in families, particularly those who have experienced significant systemic risk factors. While much resilience research focuses on ethnic and cultural minorities, little research focuses specifically on American Indian/Alaskan Native (AI/AN) families. The parent-child relationship has been demonstrated to be a key characteristic in families, and this relationship may also serve as a protective factor for AI/AN families. Positive parent-child relationships are consistently linked to positive child outcomes, and parental psychological symptoms are linked with child psychological symptoms in non-Native families. These associations warrant further examination among AI/AN families. We hypothesized that the parent-child relationship would moderate the link between parent distress (i.e., depressive and anxious symptoms) and child internalizing problems in a sample of 57 AI/AN parents of children 3-5 years of age. As expected, the parent-child relationship moderated the associations between parent anxiety symptoms and child internalizing symptoms, and between parent depressive symptoms and child internalizing symptoms. Furthermore, the strength of the parent-child relationship buffered the effects of parent distress on child internalizing symptoms. Results highlight the potentially protective role of strong parent-child relationships in AI/AN families.

No abstract