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This research was supported by a Young Scholars Award from the Klaus J. Jacobs Foundation (to K.A.M., K.M.K., and K.C.M.) and partially supported by National Institute of Mental Health Grant MH092526 (to K.A.M.).
National data indicate that over half of US youths have been exposed to at least one adverse experience of maltreatment, violence, poverty, parental loss, or parental maladjustment (Finkelhor, Ormrod, Turner, & Hamby, 2005; McLaughlin et al., 2012). These experiences predict a range of negative outcomes across the life course, including poor physical and mental health and academic achievement (Duncan, Yeung, Brooks-Gunn, & Smith, 1998; Felitti et al., 1998; McLaughlin et al., 2012). Developing interventions to remediate long-term consequences of exposure to childhood adversity requires greater understanding of the developmental processes that are disrupted as a result of these experiences.
Prevailing research approaches involve limitations that reduce their utility in delineating the intervening developmental processes that lead to negative life outcomes following childhood adversity. In some studies, single types of adversity, such as abuse, neglect, or parental divorce, have been examined in isolation as predictors of developmental outcomes (Anda et al., 2006; Chase-Lansdale, Cherlin, & Kiernan, 1995; Dubowitz, Papas, Black, & Starr, 2002). Because different types of adversity frequently co-occur (Finkelhor, Ormrod, & Turner, 2007; McLaughlin et al., 2012), examining a single type of adversity without accounting for co-occuring ones makes it difficult to identify developmental consequences of particular adverse experiences. Recognition of this co-occurrence has prompted a transition to examining associations of the number of adverse experiences with developmental outcomes, which is often referred to as the cumulative-risk approach (Arata, Langhinrichsen-Rohling, Bowers, & O'Brien, 2007; Dube et al., 2003; Edwards, Holden, Felitti, & Anda, 2003; Evans, Li, & Whipple, 2013). However, this approach assumes that diverse experiences influence development through similar mechanisms and obscures differences in the associations of particular types of environmental experience with specific developmental processes. Such distinctions are likely to be important. For example, child abuse and neglect have been associated with distinct patterns of performance on emotion discrimination tasks (Pollak, Cicchetti, Hornung, & Reed, 2000).
Identifying core dimensions that underlie multiple types of childhood adversity and influence development through similar mechanisms addresses the oversimplification of prevailing...