Psychology Department, SUNY Purchase College, 735 Anderson Hill Road, Purchase, NY, 10577, USA; Psychology Department, John Jay College, City University of New York, 524 West 59th Street, New York, NY, 10019, USA.
Psychology Department, John Jay College, City University of New York, 524 West 59th Street, New York, NY, 10019, USA; Graduate Center, City University of New York, 365 5th Avenue, New York, NY, 10016, USA.
Child Abuse Negl. 2021 May;115:105011. doi: 10.1016/j.chiabu.2021.105011. Epub 2021 Feb 24.
Childhood maltreatment has been associated with deficits in cognitive functioning and poor academic performance. Not known is whether these characteristics are the direct consequence of the childhood maltreatment (that is, maltreatment plays a causal role) or whether other factors explain the relationship.
To examine whether childhood maltreatment predicts cognitive and academic functioning and whether these relationships are explained by other factors (parent cognitive and academic functioning, family social class, or parent maltreatment).
Data are from a longitudinal study of previously maltreated children, matched controls, and a subset of their offspring (697 parent-offspring dyads) interviewed in 2009-2010.
Cognitive and academic functioning were assessed in both parents and offspring with the same measures. Maltreatment was determined through official records. Hierarchical linear regressions were conducted to examine predictors of offspring cognitive and academic functioning.
Childhood maltreatment was associated with poorer cognitive functioning and worse academic performance in both generations. Controlling for age, sex, race, and whether the parent had more than one child in the study, offspring maltreatment predicted offspring cognitive functioning when it was the only predictor in the model. In a final model with all variables, only parent cognitive functioning predicted offspring cognitive functioning and parent academic functioning and parent history of maltreatment predicted offspring academic functioning.
These results challenge assumptions that childhood maltreatment directly causes deficits in cognitive and academic functioning. Policy makers and practitioners may need to rethink the design of interventions to improve the cognitive and academic functioning of maltreated children.
儿童期虐待与认知功能障碍和学业成绩不佳有关。尚不清楚这些特征是儿童期虐待的直接后果（即虐待起因果作用），还是其他因素解释了这种关系。
研究儿童期虐待是否能预测认知和学业功能，以及这些关系是否可以用其他因素（父母的认知和学业功能、家庭社会阶层或父母虐待）来解释。
数据来自一项对曾受虐待儿童、匹配对照组及其子女的纵向研究（2009-2010 年对 697 对父母-子女进行了访谈）。
采用相同的测量方法对父母和子女的认知和学业功能进行评估。通过官方记录确定虐待情况。采用分层线性回归来检验子女认知和学业功能的预测因素。
在两代人中，儿童期虐待与认知功能较差和学业成绩较差有关。在控制年龄、性别、种族以及父母在研究中是否有多个孩子的情况下，当子女虐待是模型中唯一的预测因素时，它与子女的认知功能有关。在包含所有变量的最终模型中，只有父母的认知功能预测了子女的认知功能，而父母的学业功能和父母的虐待史预测了子女的学业功能。
这些结果挑战了儿童期虐待直接导致认知和学业功能障碍的假设。政策制定者和实践者可能需要重新思考干预措施的设计，以提高受虐待儿童的认知和学业功能。
