Hidden talents in context: Cognitive performance with abstract versus ecological stimuli among adversity-exposed youth.

Adversity-exposed youth tend to score lower on cognitive tests. However, the hidden talents approach proposes some abilities are enhanced by adversity, especially under ecologically relevant conditions. Two versions of an attention-shifting and working memory updating task-one abstract, one ecological-were administered to 618 youth (Mage  = 13.62, SDage  = 0.81; 48.22% female; 64.56% White). Measures of environmental unpredictability, violence, and poverty were collected to test adversity × task version interactions. There were no interactions for attention shifting. For working memory updating, youth exposed to violence and poverty scored lower than their peers with abstract stimuli but almost just as well with ecological stimuli. These results are striking compared to contemporary developmental science, which often reports lowered performance among adversity-exposed youth.

Why and how does early adversity influence development? Toward an integrated model of dimensions of environmental experience.

Two extant frameworks - the harshness-unpredictability model and the threat-deprivation model - attempt to explain which dimensions of adversity have distinct influences on development. These models address, respectively, why, based on a history of natural selection, development operates the way it does across a range of environmental contexts, and how the neural mechanisms that underlie plasticity and learning in response to environmental experiences influence brain development. Building on these frameworks, we advance an integrated model of dimensions of environmental experience, focusing on threat-based forms of harshness, deprivation-based forms of harshness, and environmental unpredictability. This integrated model makes clear that the why and the how of development are inextricable and, together, essential to understanding which dimensions of the environment matter. Core integrative concepts include the directedness of learning, multiple levels of developmental adaptation to the environment, and tradeoffs between adaptive and maladaptive developmental responses to adversity. The integrated model proposes that proximal and distal cues to threat-based and deprivation-based forms of harshness, as well as unpredictability in those cues, calibrate development to both immediate rearing environments and broader ecological contexts, current and future. We highlight actionable directions for research needed to investigate the integrated model and advance understanding of dimensions of environmental experience.

Environmental harshness and unpredictability: Do they affect the same parents and children?

Differential susceptibility theory stipulates that individuals vary in their susceptibility to environmental effects, often implying that the same individuals differ in the same way in their susceptibility to different environmental exposures. The latter point is addressed herein by evaluating the extent to which early-life harshness and unpredictability affect mother's psychological well-being and parenting, as well as their adolescent's life-history strategy, as reflected in number of sexual partners by age 15 years, drawing on data from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development. Results indicated that mothers whose well-being and parenting proved more susceptible to harshness also proved somewhat more susceptible to environmental unpredictability, with the same being true of adolescent sexual behavior. Nevertheless, findings caution against overgeneralizing sample-level findings to all individuals.

Hidden talents in harsh environments.

Although early-life adversity can undermine healthy development, children growing up in harsh environments may develop intact, or even enhanced, skills for solving problems in high-adversity contexts (i.e., "hidden talents"). Here we situate the hidden talents model within a larger interdisciplinary framework. Summarizing theory and research on hidden talents, we propose that stress-adapted skills represent a form of adaptive intelligence that enables individuals to function within the constraints of harsh, unpredictable environments. We discuss the alignment of the hidden talents model with current knowledge about human brain development following early adversity; examine potential applications of this perspective to multiple sectors concerned with youth from harsh environments, including education, social services, and juvenile justice; and compare the hidden talents model with contemporary developmental resilience models. We conclude that the hidden talents approach offers exciting new directions for research on developmental adaptations to childhood adversity, with translational implications for leveraging stress-adapted skills to more effectively tailor education, jobs, and interventions to fit the needs and potentials of individuals from a diverse range of life circumstances. This approach affords a well-rounded view of people who live with adversity that avoids stigma and communicates a novel, distinctive, and strength-based message.

Early external-environmental and internal-health predictors of risky sexual and aggressive behavior in adolescence: An integrative approach.

External predictive adaptive response (PAR) models assume that developmental exposures to stress carry predictive information about the future state of the environment, and that development of a faster life history (LH) strategy in this context functions to match the individual to this expected harsh state. More recently internal PAR models have proposed that early somatic condition (i.e., physical health) critically regulates development of LH strategies to match expected future somatic condition. Here we test the integrative hypothesis that poor physical health mediates the relation between early adversity and faster LH strategies. Data were drawn from a longitudinal study (birth to age 16; N = 1,388) of mostly African American participants with prenatal substance exposure. Results demonstrated that both external environmental conditions early in life (prenatal substance exposure, socioeconomic adversity, caregiver distress/depression, and adverse family functioning) and internal somatic condition during preadolescence (birthweight/gestational age, physical illness) uniquely predicted the development of faster LH strategies in adolescence (as indicated by more risky sexual and aggressive behavior). Consistent with the integrative hypothesis, the effect of caregiver distress/depression on LH strategy was mostly mediated by worse physical health. Discussion highlights the implications of these findings for theory and research on stress, development, and health.

Effects of Fathers on Adolescent Daughters' Frequency of Substance Use and Risky Sexual Behavior.

This research: (1) implements a genetically informed design to examine the effects of fathers' presence-absence and quality of behavior during childhood/adolescence on daughters' frequency of substance use during adolescence; and (2) tests substance use frequency as mediating the relation between paternal behavior and daughters' sexual risk taking. Participants were 223 sister dyads from divorced/separated biological families. Sisters' developmental exposure to socially deviant paternal behavior predicted their frequency of tobacco, alcohol, and cannabis (TAC) use. Older sisters who co-resided with fathers who were more (vs. less) socially deviant reported more frequent TAC use during adolescence. More frequent TAC use predicted more risky sexual behavior for these daughters. No effects were found for younger sisters, who spent less time living with their fathers.

Hidden talents in harsh conditions? A preregistered study of memory and reasoning about social dominance.

Although growing up in stressful conditions can undermine mental abilities, people in harsh environments may develop intact, or even enhanced, social and cognitive abilities for solving problems in high-adversity contexts (i.e. 'hidden talents'). We examine whether childhood and current exposure to violence are associated with memory (number of learning rounds needed to memorize relations between items) and reasoning performance (accuracy in deducing a novel relation) on transitive inference tasks involving both violence-relevant and violence-neutral social information (social dominance vs. chronological age). We hypothesized that individuals who had more exposure to violence would perform better than individuals with less exposure on the social dominance task. We tested this hypothesis in a preregistered study in 100 Dutch college students and 99 Dutch community participants. We found that more exposure to violence was associated with lower overall memory performance, but not with reasoning performance. However, the main effects of current (but not childhood) exposure to violence on memory were qualified by significant interaction effects. More current exposure to neighborhood violence was associated with worse memory for age relations, but not with memory for dominance relations. By contrast, more current personal involvement in violence was associated with better memory for dominance relations, but not with memory for age relations. These results suggest incomplete transfer of learning and memory abilities across contents. This pattern of results, which supports a combination of deficits and 'hidden talents,' is striking in relation to the broader developmental literature, which has nearly exclusively reported deficits in people from harsh conditions. A video abstract of this article can be viewed at: https://youtu.be/e4ePmSzZsuc.

Developmental Adaptation to Stress: An Evolutionary Perspective.

The assumption that early stress leads to dysregulation and impairment is widespread in developmental science and informs prevailing models (e.g., toxic stress). An alternative evolutionary-developmental approach, which complements the standard emphasis on dysregulation, proposes that early stress may prompt the development of costly but adaptive strategies that promote survival and reproduction under adverse conditions. In this review, we survey this growing theoretical and empirical literature, highlighting recent developments and outstanding questions. We review concepts of adaptive plasticity and conditional adaptation, introduce the life history framework and the adaptive calibration model, and consider how physiological stress response systems and related neuroendocrine processes may function as plasticity mechanisms. We then address the evolution of individual differences in susceptibility to the environment, which engenders systematic person-environment interactions in the effects of stress on development. Finally, we discuss stress-mediated regulation of pubertal development as a case study of how an evolutionary-developmental approach can foster theoretical integration.

Biological sensitivity to context: A test of the hypothesized U-shaped relation between early adversity and stress responsivity.

We conducted signal detection analyses to test for curvilinear, U-shaped relations between early experiences of adversity and heightened physiological responses to challenge, as proposed by biological sensitivity to context theory. Based on analysis of an ethnically diverse sample of 338 kindergarten children (4-6 years old) and their families, we identified levels and types of adversity that, singly and interactively, predicted high (top 25%) and low (bottom 25%) rates of stress reactivity. The results offered support for the hypothesized U-shaped curve and conceptually replicated and extended the work of Ellis, Essex, and Boyce (2005). Across both sympathetic and adrenocortical systems, a disproportionate number of children growing up under conditions characterized by either low or high adversity (as indexed by restrictive parenting, family stress, and family economic condition) displayed heightened stress reactivity, compared with peers growing up under conditions of moderate adversity. Finally, as hypothesized by the adaptive calibration model, a disproportionate number of children who experienced exceptionally stressful family conditions displayed blunted cortisol reactivity to stress.

Low socioeconomic status and eating in the absence of hunger in children aged 3-14.

A growing body of research indicates that one's early life experiences may play an important role in regulating patterns of energy intake in adulthood. In particular, adults who grew up under conditions characterized by low socioeconomic status (SES) tend to eat in the absence of hunger (EAH), a pattern that is not generally observed among higher-SES individuals. In the current study, we sought to examine (a) the environmental correlates of low SES that drive the association between low childhood SES and EAH and (b) whether the relationship between these variables is already manifest in children ages 3-14. Results of our study revealed that growing up in low-SES environments predicted less food security, diminished ability to meet financial needs, and less environmental predictability/safety. Further, the results indicated that reduced environmental predictability/safety in the children's environment interacted with children's current energy need to predict eating behavior. Consistent with patterns observed in adults, children from more predictable/safe environments ate food commensurate with their energy need, whereas those from less predictable/safe environments ate comparably high amounts of food across levels of energy need. These results offer needed insights into the development of environmentally-contingent energy-regulation strategies.

Linking emotional reactivity "for better and for worse" to differential susceptibility to parenting among kindergartners.

This study used a combination of microlevel observation data and longitudinal questionnaire data to study the relationship between differential reactivity and differential susceptibility, guided by three questions: (a) Does a subset of children exist that is both more likely to respond with increasingly negative emotions to increasingly negative emotions of mothers and with increasingly positive emotions to increasingly positive emotions of mothers ("emotional reactivity")? (b) Is emotional reactivity associated with temperament markers and rearing environment? (c) Are children who show high emotional reactivity "for better and for worse" also more susceptible to parenting predicting child behavior across a year? A total of 144 Dutch children (45.3% girls) aged four to six participated. Latent profile analyses revealed a group of average reactive children (87%) and a group that was emotionally reactive "for better and for worse" (13%). Highly reactive children scored higher on surgency and received lower levels of negative parenting. Finally, associations of negative and positive parenting with externalizing and prosocial behavior were similar (and nonsignificant) for highly reactive children and average reactive children. The findings suggest that children who are emotionally reactive "for better and for worse" within parent-child interactions are not necessarily more susceptible to parenting on a developmental time scale.

The adaptive calibration model of stress responsivity: An empirical test in the Tracking Adolescents' Individual Lives Survey study.

The adaptive calibration model (ACM) is a theory of developmental programing focusing on calibration of stress response systems and associated life history strategies to local environmental conditions. In this article, we tested some key predictions of the ACM in a longitudinal study of Dutch adolescent males (11-16 years old; N = 351). Measures of sympathetic, parasympathetic, and adrenocortical activation, reactivity to, and recovery from social-evaluative stress validated the four-pattern taxonomy of the ACM via latent profile analysis, though with some deviations from expected patterns. The physiological profiles generally showed predicted associations with antecedent measures of familial and ecological conditions and life stress; as expected, high- and low-responsivity patterns were found under both low-stress and high-stress family conditions. The four patterns were also differentially associated with aggressive/rule-breaking behavior and withdrawn/depressed behavior. This study provides measured support for key predictions of the ACM and highlights important empirical issues and methodological challenges for future research.

Children's differential susceptibility to parenting: An experimental test of "for better and for worse".

Differential susceptibility theory proposes that a subset of individuals exist who display enhanced susceptibility to both negative (risk-promoting) and positive (development-enhancing) environments. This experiment represents the first attempt to directly test this assumption by exposing children in the experimental group to both negative and positive feedback using puppet role-plays. It thereby serves as an empirical test as well as a methodological primer for testing differential susceptibility. Dutch children (N=190, 45.3% girls) between the ages of 4 and 6years participated. We examined whether negative and positive feedback would differentially affect changes in positive and negative affect, in prosocial and antisocial intentions and behavior, depending on children's negative emotionality. Results show that on hearing negative feedback, children in the experimental group increased in negative affect and decreased in positive affect more strongly than children in the control group. On hearing positive feedback, children in the experimental group tended to increase in positive affect and decrease in prosocial behavior. However, changes in response to negative or positive feedback did not depend on children's negative emotionality. Moreover, using reliable change scores, we found support for a subset of "vulnerable" children but not for a subset of "susceptible" children. The findings offer suggestions to guide future differential susceptibility experiments.

Toward a balanced view of stress-adapted cognition.

Pepper & Nettle's paper exemplifies an emerging resistance against an exclusive focus on deficits in people who come from harsh environments. We extend their model by arguing for a perspective that includes not only contextually appropriate responses but also strengths - that is, enhanced mental skills and abilities. Such a well-rounded approach can be leveraged in education, jobs, and interventions.

The Meaningful Roles Intervention: An Evolutionary Approach to Reducing Bullying and Increasing Prosocial Behavior.

Bullying is a problem that affects adolescents worldwide. Efforts to prevent bullying have been moderately successful at best, or iatrogenic at worst. We offer an explanation for this limited success by employing an evolutionary-psychological perspective to analyze antibullying interventions. We argue that bullying is a goal-directed behavior that is sensitive to benefits as well as costs, and that interventions must address these benefits. This perspective led us to develop a novel antibullying intervention, Meaningful Roles, which offers bullies prosocial alternatives-meaningful roles and responsibilities implemented through a school jobs program and reinforced through peer-to-peer praise notes-that effectively meet the same status goals as bullying behavior. We describe this new intervention and how its theoretical evolutionary roots may be applicable to other intervention programs.

Beyond allostatic load: rethinking the role of stress in regulating human development.

How do exposures to stress affect biobehavioral development and, through it, psychiatric and biomedical disorder? In the health sciences, the allostatic load model provides a widely accepted answer to this question: stress responses, while essential for survival, have negative long-term effects that promote illness. Thus, the benefits of mounting repeated biological responses to threat are traded off against costs to mental and physical health. The adaptive calibration model, an evolutionary-developmental theory of stress-health relations, extends this logic by conceptualizing these trade-offs as decision nodes in allocation of resources. Each decision node influences the next in a chain of resource allocations that become instantiated in the regulatory parameters of stress response systems. Over development, these parameters filter and embed information about key dimensions of environmental stress and support, mediating the organism's openness to environmental inputs, and function to regulate life history strategies to match those dimensions. Drawing on the adaptive calibration model, we propose that consideration of biological fitness trade-offs, as delineated by life history theory, is needed to more fully explain the complex relations between developmental exposures to stress, stress responsivity, behavioral strategies, and health. We conclude that the adaptive calibration model and allostatic load model are only partially complementary and, in some cases, support different approaches to intervention. In the long run, the field may be better served by a model informed by life history theory that addresses the adaptive role of stress response systems in regulating alternative developmental pathways.

The mating sociometer and attractive others: a double-edged sword in romantic relationships.

Eighty-one participants were recruited to test the sensitivity of the mating sociometer to mate-value feedback in the context of ongoing intimate relationships. Experiences of social rejection/acceptance by attractive opposite-sex confederates were manipulated. The effects of this manipulation on self-esteem, relationship satisfaction and commitment, perceptions of dating alternatives, and friendship-dedication were assessed. Social rejection/acceptance by members of the opposite sex altered relationship satisfaction and commitment; this causal link was amplified by changes in state self-esteem; and these effects were specific to intimate relationships and did not generalize to friendship-dedication. This research supports a domain-specific conceptualization of sociometer theory, extending the theory in important directions.

The hypothalamic-pituitary-gonadal axis: a switch-controlled, condition-sensitive system in the regulation of life history strategies.

This article is part of a Special Issue "Puberty and Adolescence". Life history theory provides an overarching framework for explaining the development of individual differences in reproductive strategies and highlights the role of familial and ecological conditions in regulating pubertal timing. Parental investment and sexual selection models afford a powerful framework for explaining the emergence of sex differences in reproductive strategies and suggest that pubertal timing in males and females is differentially sensitive to psychosocial stress. The West-Eberhard's (2003) model of switch-controlled modular systems provides the foundation for a comprehensive analysis of variation in reproductive strategies at the level of mechanism and development. Applied to puberty, this model provides a framework for explaining how genes and environments interact over development, are modulated by extant phenotypic characteristics, and operate through control of regulatory switch mechanisms across multiple levels of the hypothalamic-pituitary-gonadal axis. Taken together, life history theory, parental investment and sexual selection models, and the West-Eberhard framework enable an integrated evolutionary-developmental analysis of between-sex variation and within-sex variation in pubertal processes and their role in regulating alternative life history strategies.

Effects of family cohesion and heart rate reactivity on aggressive/rule-breaking behavior and prosocial behavior in adolescence: the Tracking Adolescents' Individual Lives Survey study.

The biological sensitivity to context hypothesis posits that high physiological reactivity (i.e., increases in arousal from baseline) constitutes heightened sensitivity to environmental influences, for better or worse. To test this hypothesis, we examined the interactive effects of family cohesion and heart rate reactivity to a public speaking task on aggressive/rule-breaking and prosocial behavior in a large sample of adolescents (N = 679; M age = 16.14). Multivariate analyses revealed small- to medium-sized main effects of lower family cohesion and lower heart rate reactivity on higher levels of aggressive/rule-breaking and lower levels of prosocial behavior. Although there was some evidence of three-way interactions among family cohesion, heart rate reactivity, and sex in predicting these outcome variables, these interactions were not in the direction predicted by the biological sensitivity to context hypothesis. Instead, heightened reactivity appeared to operate as a protective factor against family adversity, rather than as a susceptibility factor. The results of the present study raise the possibility that stress reactivity may no longer operate as a mechanism of differential susceptibility in adolescence.