Child Development
Volume 90, Issue 6, 2019, Pages 1856-1865

Minds Under Siege: Cognitive Signatures of Poverty and Trauma in Refugee and Non-Refugee Adolescents (Article) (Open Access)

Chen A. , Panter-Brick C. , Hadfield K.* , Dajani R. , Hamoudi A. , Sheridan M.
  • a Harvard University, United States
  • b Yale University, United States
  • c Queen Mary University of London, United Kingdom
  • d Hashemite University, Jordan
  • e University of Wisconsin–Madison, United States
  • f University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, United States

Abstract

The impacts of war and displacement on executive function (EF)—what we might call the cognitive signatures of minds under siege—are little known. We surveyed a gender-balanced sample of 12- to 18-year-old Syrian refugees (n = 240) and Jordanian non-refugees (n = 210) living in Jordan. We examined the relative contributions of poverty, trauma exposure, posttraumatic stress, and insecurity to variance in inhibitory control and working memory. We observed associations between poverty and WM, suggesting that, even in populations exposed to substantial violence and fear, poverty is a specific pathway to WM deficit. We did not, however, find associations between EFs and exposures to trauma. Careful distinction between childhood adversities may illuminate which neurocognitive pathways matter for measures of cognitive function. © 2019 The Authors. Child Development published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc. on behalf of Society for Research in Child Development

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Link
https://www.scopus.com/inward/record.uri?eid=2-s2.0-85074660093&doi=10.1111%2fcdev.13320&partnerID=40&md5=e0861c3c74429729c2c730d6749e9d1d
DOI: 10.1111/cdev.13320
ISSN: 00093920
Original Language: English