Self-reported childhood family adversity is linked to an attenuated gain of trust during adolescence [post]

Andrea M.F. Reiter, Andreas Hula, Lucy Vanes, Tobias U. Hauser, Danae Kokorikou, Ian Goodyer, Peter Fonagy, Michael Moutoussis, Raymond J Dolan
2022 unpublished
A longstanding proposal in developmental research is that childhood family experiences provide a template that shapes the emergence of a capacity for trust-based social relationships. Here, by leveraging longitudinal data from a large cohort of healthy adolescents (n=570, aged 14-25), that includes computational decision-making and psychometric data, we characterise typical developmental trajectories of trust behaviour, as well as individual differences therein. Extending on previous
more » ... onal findings from the same cohort, we show that a task-based measure of trust increased longitudinally from adolescence into young adulthood. Computational modelling findings were consistent with this increase being best explained as arising out of an adaptive decrease in social risk aversion. Self-reported family adversity attenuated this developmental gain in trust behaviour, and within our computational trust model this related to a higher 'irritability' parameter in those who had experienced greater adversity. Crucially, unconditional trust (i.e., a priori trust before observing others' reciprocity) at measurement time point T1 predicted the longitudinal trajectory in quality of peer relations, particularly so for those rated as high in family adversity, consistent with trust acting as a resilience factor. Our findings indicate the quality of earlier life family experience is linked to intra-individual development of trust, where the latter impacts on the quality of peer relationships during late adolescent social development.
doi:10.31234/osf.io/34vnx fatcat:d73wjcmpu5hczhyzdnvqh745ta