Adversity Is Associated With Lower General Processing Speed Rather Than Executive Functioning

Exposure to adversity may impair executive functioning (EF; i.e., deficit frameworks), but could also enhance, or leave intact, specific EF abilities (i.e., adaptation frameworks). Both frameworks often use raw performance (e.g., speed) to estimate EF ability. However, this approach (a) conflates different cognitive processes and (b) generally does not distinguish specific EF abilities from processes that are shared across EF tasks, such as general processing speed. Here, we integrate deficit and adaptation frameworks by building bridges with mathematical and cognitive psychology. Specifically, we use cognitive modeling (drift diffusion modeling) to isolate different cognitive processes: speed of information accumulation, response caution, and speed of stimulus encoding and response execution. We then use structural equation modeling to investigate whether associations between adversity and cognitive processes are task-general or ability-specific. We recruited 1,061 participants from the Dutch Longitudinal Internet Studies for the Social Sciences panel. Participants completed a basic processing speed task, two inhibition tasks, and three attention-shifting tasks. We measured self-reported exposure to threat and material deprivation in childhood and adulthood. Exposure to threat (but not deprivation) in adulthood was negatively associated with task-general processing speed. After accounting for task-general processes, the remaining variance was not related to either inhibition or attention-shifting ability. Nonpreregistered analyses showed that childhood exposure to deprivation and threat was negatively associated with (a) general processing speed and (b) task-specific information accumulation. The latter reflected unique features of individual tasks, rather than specific EF abilities. Taken together, these results suggest that adversity researchers may overestimate associations between adversity and specific EF abilities when analyzing raw performance.