7 - (IOP 13) Deprivation and Threat as Predictors of Emotion Regulation in Early Adolescence: The Protective Role of School Support

Childhood adversity (CA) impacts a large proportion of US youth and is linked with a range of negative developmental and health outcomes. McLaughlin and Sheridan (2016) proposed the Dimensional Model of Adversity and Psychopathology (DMAP), providing a framework for understanding the heterogeneity of outcomes related to CA. DMAP emphasizes that deprivation (i.e., lack of expected cognitive or social stimulation) and environmental threat (i.e., exposure to harm or the threat of harm) impacts youth development differentially and should be assessed as distinct exposures. Specifically, deprivation is believed to predict poor cognitive functioning outcomes, while threat is thought to predict emotion dysregulation. The current study applied the DMAP framework while using data from the Adolescent Brain and Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study, a large-scale multisite study examining cognitive, emotional, and neural development in adolescents across 21 sites in the US. We investigated the impact of both threat and deprivation on emotion dysregulation within this sample. Further, the current study examined the role of school support in moderating the association between CA and emotion regulation (ER).

Participants included 10,397 youth (M= 9.91, SD= 0.62) who completed the Baseline ABCD Study appointment (47.84% female; 54.60% White, 13.91% Black, 18.87% Hispanic/Latiné 2.00% Asian, and 10.62% other race/ethnicity). The ABCD Baseline wave was conducted between 2016 and 2018. PTEs were assessed through exposure to trauma and deprivation was measured via household income, parental monitoring, and parental warmth.

Higher levels of potentially traumatic events (PTEs; B= 4.01, p <.001) predicted greater deficits in ER and higher household income (B= -0.50, p <.001), parental monitoring (B= -2.38, p <.001), and parental warmth (B= -1.55, p =.001) predicted lowers deficits in ER through linear regression mixed models. Additionally, binomial logistic mixed models supported that higher exposure to PTEs (OR=1.07, p <.001) and lower household income (OR= -0.99, p <.001), parental monitoring (OR= -0.96, p <.001), and parental warmth (OR= -0.98, p =.04) increased the odds that an adolescent would demonstrate worse deficits in ER. Further, the interaction between PTEs and school support significantly predicted deficits in ER (B= -0.13, p = .046), such that the association between PTEs and deficits in ER was weakened at higher levels of school support. No other moderations were significant. Due to cultural differences in parenting and school climate, exploratory analyses were conducted in samples stratified by race/ethnicity, revealing one significant moderation among the sample of Asian youth (B= 1.46, p = .046).

Findings revealed that both threat and deprivation are linked to deficits in ER. Additionally, school support may serve as a protective factor in the association between threat and ER, particularly among Asian youth. These findings partially support the DMAP and inform our understanding of development related to exposure to CA, as well as potential opportunities for intervention to promote positive development after experiences of adversity.