The relationship between early life adversity and adult outcomes is traditionally investigated relative to risk and protective factors (e.g., resilience, cognitive appraisal), and poor self-control or decision-making. However, life history theory suggests this relationship may be adaptive-underpinned by mechanisms that use early environmental cues to alter the developmental trajectory toward more short-term strategies. These short-term strategies have some theoretical overlap with the most common process models of decision-making-evidence accumulation models-which model decision urgency as a decision threshold. The current study examined the relationship between decision urgency (through the linear ballistic accumulator) and early life adversity. A mixture of analysis methods, including a joint model analysis designed to explicitly account for uncertainty in estimated decision urgency values, revealed weak-to-strong evidence in favor of a relationship between decision urgency and early life adversity, suggesting a possible effect of life history strategy on even the most basic decisions.
CITATION STYLE
Knowles, J. P., Evans, N. J., & Burke, D. (2019). Some evidence for an association between early life adversity and decision urgency. Frontiers in Psychology, 10(FEB). https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.00243
Mendeley helps you to discover research relevant for your work.