Childhood adversity is common and by some estimates more than half of the global population has been exposed to one. Examples of childhood adversities include maltreatment, severe illness and death of a family member, divorce, and foster care. Cognitive ability is formed during childhood and persistent exposure to childhood adversity is perceived as toxic stress that may interfere with cognitive development. Systematic reviews have documented weak to moderate, and mixed effects of association between childhood adversity and cognitive ability in children, young adults and adults. Though the current evidence suggests a harmful effect of childhood adversity on cognitive development, the results of these studies must be interpreted considering several significant limitations including measuring adversities at single time points though they tend to cluster and co-occur, study design limitations (recall bias and selective participation), and small study samples. In this PhD, we will overcome these limitations.
Purpose
To investigate how childhood adversity trajectories from infancy through adolescence are related to cognitive development indicators such as school performance and intelligence.
Method
Register-based epidemiology. Data sources include the Danish Life Course (DANLIFE) cohort, the Danish Conscription Registry, national test performance from 2nd through 8th grade from the Danish Ministry of Children and Education etc.
Project period
July 15, 2024 - July 14, 2027
Collaboration
The PhD project is a part of a larger project called “The Cognition Program” with Trine Flensborg-Madsen as principal investigator. The project aims to investigate how social (childhood adversity) and environmental (air pollution, road traffic noise) factors relates to cognitive development. The project is a collaboration between professor and research leader Naja Hulvej Rod (Copenhagen Health Complexity Center, University of Copenhagen), professor and research leader Zorana Jovanovic Andersen (Section of Environmental Health, University of Copenhagen) and professor and research leader Trine Flensborg-Madsen (Child and Adolescent Health, National Institute of Public Health) and many other proficient collaborators.