Early-Life Adversity Accelerates Child and Adolescent Development

By J. Belsky. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 2019

117 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Most developmental work regards adverse developmental experiences as forces that undermine well-being. Here, I present an alternative—or complementary—view, summarizing recent evidence on puberty, endocrinology, cellular aging, and brain connectivity that collectively reveals developmental acceleration in response to contextual adversity. Findings are cast in evolutionary-developmental terms, highlighting the trade-off between accelerated aging and (a) increased morbidity and (b) premature mortality.

Subfields: Behavioral Neuroscience, Pediatrics, Perinatology and Child Health, Social Psychology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/fc69ea321cba832b81bb0915dfff2a32fc14ff65

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Behavioral Neuroscience

1. Daniel Nettle
2. Willem E. Frankenhuis

In Pediatrics, Perinatology and Child Health

1. Daniel Nettle
2. Willem E. Frankenhuis

In Social Psychology

1. Daniel Nettle
2. Willem E. Frankenhuis
3. Colin G. DeYoung

Citations in the corpus

• The Strengths of People in Poverty (2020, background): “…their bodies deteriorate (“weather”) faster, increasing their probability of dying or becoming disabled during or even before middle adulthood, when they would be producing and raising offspring (Belsky, 2019; Geronimus, 1997, 2004; Geronimus et al., 1999; Rickard, Frankenhuis, & Nettle, 2014).”