Distinct Associations of Threat and Deprivation With Changes in Affective Control during Adolescence: A Longitudinal Population‐Based Study

Abstract

ABSTRACT Childhood adversity has been linked to disruptions in the development of emotion regulation, yet few longitudinal studies have examined whether distinct dimensions of adversity are differentially associated with changes in affective inhibitory control across adolescence. This study examined whether threat and deprivation experiences differentially predicted changes in affective inhibitory control across early to middle adolescence. Participants were 902 adolescents (51.5% girls) from the UEVO study, assessed at ages 12–14 years at Time 1 (T1) and 15–16 years at Time 2 (T2). Affective inhibitory control was measured using an online emotional go/no‐go task. Adolescents showed fewer false alarms to angry no‐go stimuli at T2 than at T1, indicating improvement in affective inhibitory control over time. Latent change score modeling further supported this pattern, showing that adolescents with poorer baseline performance demonstrated greater improvement over time (β = −0.66, p < 0.001). In the primary model, higher levels of threat predicted less improvement in affective inhibitory control (β = 0.09, p = 0.013), whereas deprivation was not significantly associated with change (β = −0.05, p = 0.073). Neither threat nor deprivation predicted change in false alarms to neutral faces. In sensitivity analyses adjusting for gender, age, socioeconomic status (SES), and caregiver risk, threat remained a significant predictor of less improvement (β = 0.12, p = 0.004), whereas deprivation emerged as a small predictor of greater improvement (β = −0.06, p = 0.042). Post‐hoc multigroup analyses provided no evidence that the associations between adversity and change differed by gender. These findings suggest that threat and deprivation show partly distinct associations with affective inhibitory control, with threat‐related adversity emerging as the more consistent predictor of reduced improvement across early to middle adolescence.