Longitudinal Association of Child Maltreatment and Cognitive Functioning

Abstract

Background: Although research investigating associations among child maltreatment, cognitive functioning, and academic achievement has grown in recent years, important questions remain. In particular, assessing the influence of maltreatment apart from that of other co-occurring and confounding factors remains difficult. This study was developed to further the field’s understanding by investigating cognitive functioning in association with time-variant maltreatment patterns.

Methods: The Minnesota Comprehensive Assessment-II (MCA II) reading sub-strand test scores of students who enrolled in third through sixth grade in the 2008 academic year were analyzed to examine the effect of timing of maltreatment experience on cognitive functioning for three sequential years. Study samples were categorized into three mutually exclusive groups as follow: Group 1 (n=2,491) included all students whose maltreatment experience(s) occurred prior to the 2008 academic year. Group 2 (n=654) included all students whose maltreatment experience(s), as the first and last episodes, occurred between the 2008 academic year and the 2008 MCA-II test date. Group 3 (n=3,685), a reference group, was comprised of students whose first maltreatment experience was reported two academic years after 2008, on or after August 1, 2010. These groups were chosen to ensure that potential co-occurring or confounding factors were similar across groups as they were all drawn from the CPS population, and to provide enough separation among groups with respect to timing to determine effects on cognitive functioning. Using multiple time-variant linear mixed models, we investigated the relationships between maltreatment timing and three domains of cognitive functioning (i.e., knowledge, comprehension, and analysis).

Results: This is the first population-based observational studies to investigate the longitudinal relationship between child maltreatment and cognitive functioning among children in Minnesota. When cognitive reasoning was operationalized in terms of three different domains (i.e., knowledge, comprehension, and analysis), maltreatment timing was differentially associated with the development of cognitive functioning. In general, children who experienced maltreatment prior to the 2008 academic year (group 1) and during the 2008 academic year (group 2) tended to score lower on the MCA-II reading test, which measures cognitive complexity, as compared to those who experienced maltreatment after the 2010 academic year (group 3). However, poverty status reduced the effect of maltreatment timing on cognitive functioning, similar to that found in the previous study.

Conclusion and Implications: The cognitive functioning of students who experienced maltreatment concurrent with the testing year fluctuated over time whereas the cognitive functioning of students who experienced maltreatment prior to or after the testing year remained stable. Students who experienced concurrent maltreatment showed the lowest functioning of any group. In this regard, a significant cognitive disadvantage was presented when children experienced maltreatment and that cognitive functioning varied by the timing of the maltreatment experience. The study findings highlight the needs for strategies to improve children’s cognitive outcomes to reduce both short- and long-term adverse consequences of childhood maltreatment.