Cognitive Adaptations to Stressful Environments 1 Cognitive Adaptations to Stressful Environments: When Childhood Adversity Enhances Adult Executive Function Forthcoming, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology Cognitive Adaptations to Stressful Environments: When Childhood Adversity Enhances A

Can growing up in a stressful childhood environment enhance certain cognitive functions? Drawing participants from higher-income and lower-income backgrounds, we tested how adults who grew up in harsh or unpredictable environments fared on two types of executive function tasks: inhibition and shifting. People who experienced unpredictable childhoods performed worse at inhibition (overriding dominant responses), but performed better at shifting (efficiently switching between different tasks). This finding is consistent with the notion that shifting, but not inhibition, is especially useful in unpredictable environments. Importantly, differences in executive function between people who experienced unpredictable versus predictable childhoods emerged only when they were tested in uncertain contexts. This catalyst suggests that some individual differences related to early-life experience are manifested under conditions of uncertainty in adulthood. Viewed as a whole, these findings indicate that adverse childhood environments do not universally impair mental functioning, but can actually enhance specific types of cognitive performance in the face of uncertainty. Can growing up in a stressful environment enhance certain cognitive functions? The evidence thus far suggests the answer is no. People who grow up in stressful environments tend to score lower on tests of intelligence, memory, and other important cognitive abilities exposure to early-life stress impairs general mental functioning. It is commonly presumed that experiencing an adverse childhood environment compromises cognitive competencies and prevents people from fully developing their cognitive potential. Although these findings are important, they might not tell the whole story. Rather than impairing cognitive functioning, we suggest that childhood adversity shapes cognition in adaptive ways. According to evolutionary models of behavior, the minds of individuals who are reared in stressful environments should be specialized to perform tasks that are adaptive in such for example, a person grows up in an unpredictable and constantly changing environment, he or she ought to develop cognitive tendencies that help him or her function adaptively in this type of challenging environment. The notion that stressful early-life conditions might adaptively shape rather than impair cognition raises an important question: Might experiencing a stressful childhood environment actually improve specific types of cognitive performance (Frankenhuis & de Weerth, 2013)? In this research, we investigate how two dimensions of early-life environmental stress—exposure to an unpredictable or a harsh childhood environment—influence cognitive functioning in adults. Cognitive Adaptations to Stressful Environments 4 We test how people who grew up in environments that differed in harshness or unpredictability fare on two types of executive function …