Peer-reviewed article
Distinct Associations of Threat and Deprivation With Changes in Affective Control during Adolescence: A Longitudinal Population-Based Study.
Sætren SS, Tjora T, Tamnes CK, Ferschmann L, Hafstad GS et al. ·
Summary
Written by AI, not yet AICS's view · claude-haiku-4-5-20251001This longitudinal study followed 902 adolescents aged 12-16 years to examine how different types of childhood adversity affect the development of emotion regulation. Adolescents generally improved their ability to control emotional responses over time, but those exposed to threat-related adversity showed less improvement than their peers. Deprivation showed a different pattern, with a small association with greater improvement in some analyses.
Key points
- Adolescents showed improvement in affective inhibitory control from ages 12-14 to 15-16, with fewer false alarms to angry faces at the later timepoint
- Higher threat exposure predicted less improvement in affective inhibitory control (β = 0.09, p = 0.013)
- Deprivation was not significantly associated with change in the primary model but showed a small association with greater improvement in sensitivity analyses
- Threat remained a significant predictor of reduced improvement even after adjusting for gender, age, SES, and caregiver risk
- No differences were found between boys and girls in how threat and deprivation affected emotional control development
Limitations
The study does not examine the mechanisms through which threat and deprivation affect emotion regulation development, nor does it specify the types or severity of adversity experienced. The findings are specific to affective inhibitory control measured by a go/no-go task and may not generalise to other forms of emotion regulation.
Abstract
Childhood adversity has been linked to disruptions in the development of emotion regulation, yet few longitudinal studies have examined whether distinct dimensions of adversity are differentially associated with changes in affective inhibitory control across adolescence. This study examined whether threat and deprivation experiences differentially predicted changes in affective inhibitory control across early to middle adolescence. Participants were 902 adolescents (51.5% girls) from the UEVO study, assessed at ages 12-14 years at Time 1 (T1) and 15-16 years at Time 2 (T2). Affective inhibitory control was measured using an online emotional go/no-go task. Adolescents showed fewer false alarms to angry no-go stimuli at T2 than at T1, indicating improvement in affective inhibitory control over time. Latent change score modeling further supported this pattern, showing that adolescents with poorer baseline performance demonstrated greater improvement over time (β = -0.66, p < 0.001). In the primary model, higher levels of threat predicted less improvement in affective inhibitory control (β = 0.09, p = 0.013), whereas deprivation was not significantly associated with change (β = -0.05, p = 0.073). Neither threat nor deprivation predicted change in false alarms to neutral faces. In sensitivity analyses adjusting for gender, age, socioeconomic status (SES), and caregiver risk, threat remained a significant predictor of less improvement (β = 0.12, p = 0.004), whereas deprivation emerged as a small predictor of greater improvement (β = -0.06, p = 0.042). Post-hoc multigroup analyses provided no evidence that the associations between adversity and change differed by gender. These findings suggest that threat and deprivation show partly distinct associations with affective inhibitory control, with threat-related adversity emerging as the more consistent predictor of reduced improvement across early to middle adolescence.
Findings the Hub has extracted
Each claim below is labelled by its type of design and links back to this report.
- Intervention
- Natural exposure to threat and deprivation adversity (observational study of existing conditions, not an intervention)
- Population
- 902 adolescents (51.5% girls) from the UEVO study, assessed at ages 12-14 years and 15-16 years
Key finding
Adolescents showed general improvement in affective inhibitory control over time, with fewer false alarms to angry no-go stimuli at T2 than T1