Adverse Childhood Experiences and Later-Life Cognitive Function: Evidence From a Population-Based Study of Older Men and Women in Post-Apartheid Rural South Africa

Lindsay Kobayashi , Harvard University
Meagan Farrell, Harvard University
Collin Payne, Australian National University
Livia Montana, Harvard University
Ryan Wagner, MRC/Wits Rural Public Health and Health Transitions Research Unit
Kathleen Kahn, University of the Witwatersrand
Stephen Tollman, University of the Witwatersrand
Lisa Berkman, Harvard University

Adverse childhood experiences are associated with negative health outcomes throughout the life course, but their relationships with later-life cognitive outcomes are understudied, especially in low- and middle-income countries. We investigated the associations between four adverse childhood experiences (parent unemployed for >6 months, parents drank or used drugs, parents argued/fought often, physical abuse by parents) and cognitive function domains measured on a novel tablet designed for low-literacy settings. Data were from a population-based study of 2,497 adults aged 40+ in rural South Africa (“Health and Aging in Africa: Longitudinal Study of an INDEPTH Community in South Africa”). The adverse experiences were relatively common (e.g. 35% physical abuse), and were not associated with measures of executive function, language, visuospatial abilities, or memory in multivariable modelling. These early results from a low-income, post-Apartheid setting raise several questions, and should be corroborated in other studies in South Africa and other global contexts.

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 Presented in Session 39. Cognitive Aging Research in Novel Contexts