Date of Award
Fall 2023
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Department
Psychology
First Advisor
Baskin-Sommers, Arielle
Abstract
Childhood adversity is one of the strongest predictors of long-term psychological,social, and physical negative life outcomes. Two subtypes of adversity, one perpetrated by someone in the home environment (i.e., childhood maltreatment, parental harshness) and the other perpetrated by someone in the community (i.e., exposure to community violence), are especially salient predictors of poor mental health and increased antisocial behavior. Research aimed at describing the occurrence of adversity often examines these subtypes separately. As a result, our understanding of the ways individuals experience adversity in the home and community and the long-term impact of co-occurring adversity is limited. Additionally, perhaps following from the tendency to examine subtypes of adversity in isolation, there are gaps in our knowledge about the basic processes that may influence how subtypes of adversity translate to negative life outcomes. Far more process-level research focuses on adversity in the home environment than in the community. In this dissertation, I present three studies that address gaps in our current understanding of the occurrence and impact of subtypes of adversity and the processes affected by specific subtypes of adversity. In Chapters 2 and 3 (Estrada et al., 2021; Estrada & Baskin-Sommers, under review), I examine the prevalence of subgroups of individuals who experience varying amounts of exposure to adversity in the home and community, assessed cross-sectionally and longitudinally, and how combinations of adversity differentially relate to various negative life outcomes. In Chapter 4 (Estrada et al., 2020), following from research in the home adversity domain, I investigate the role of basic learning processes in impacting the relationship between community adversity and violent behavior. Across Chapters 2 and 3, I find that individuals whose experience is characterized by greater adversity in the home compared to the community show increased mental health problems whereas individuals whose experience is characterized by greater adversity in the community compared to the home show increased criminal behavior. In Chapter 4, I show that nonassociative learning capability is a basic process through which adversity in the community, but not in the home, may confer risk violent criminal behavior. Taken together, these findings highlight the specific associations between combinations of adversity and negative life outcomes and reveal how basic learning processes may relate to some, but not all, adversity subtypes. Greater delineation of the relationships between subtypes of adversity and negative life outcomes will allow for more accurate description of the lived experience and provide the foundation for mechanistic work that seeks to understand how combinations of adversity promote specific negative life outcomes.
Recommended Citation
Estrada, Suzanne Charlotte, "Consequences of Childhood Maltreatment and Exposure to Community Violence: A Single-Moment and Longitudinal Trajectory Examination" (2023). Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertations. 1224.
https://elischolar.library.yale.edu/gsas_dissertations/1224
