THE EFFECT OF ADVERSE CHILDHOOD EXPERIENCES ON AUTONOMIC ACTIVITY IN ADULTHOOD

Abstract

Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) are a significant and highly prevalent issue. ACEs include physical, psychological, and sexual abuse, dysfunction in the home, parental loss through divorce and or death, and other potentially traumatic events (Felitti et al., 1998). More research is needed to gain a better understanding of how ACEs are linked to long-term negative mental health outcomes and physiology. A non-invasive way to understand the relationship between adversity and mental and physical health is to examine physiological activity patterns of the autonomic nervous system (sympathetic and parasympathetic). Such physiological measures include electrodermal activity (EDA), heart rate (HR), and heart rate variability (HRV). The purpose of this study was to investigate if certain autonomic activity patterns are associated with ACEs and if these activity patterns can be observed in early adulthood. To do this, EDA, HR, and HRV were collected from participants during a baseline period of rest and while they completed a stressful task (Stroop Test). Additionally, participants were measured in this study using the Adversity and Abuse Items from the Harvard Second Generation Study Questionnaire (Morrill et al., 2019). Certain demographic information is also being collected. The hypotheses of this study were as follows: 1) Individuals who score high on the ACEs scale will display higher levels of HR and EDA at baseline than those with low scores, 2) individuals who score high on the ACEs scale will have higher HR and EDA during the stress task than those with low ACEs scores, and 3) Participants in the high ACEs group will have lower overall HRV than those in the low ACEs groups. The results of this study did not show any significant differences between ACEs groups and their physiological measures during baseline or during the Stroop task.