https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.00243/full
The relationship between early life adversity and adult outcomes is traditionally investigated relative to risk and protective factors (e.g., resilience, cognitive appraisal), and poor self-control or decision-making. However, life history theory suggests this relationship may be adaptive—underpinned by mechanisms that use early environmental cues to alter the developmental trajectory toward more short-term strategies. These short-term strategies have some theoretical overlap with the most common process models of decision-making—evidence accumulation models—which model decision urgency as a decision threshold. In the current paper, the authors examined the relationship between decision urgency (through the linear ballistic accumulator) and early life adversity. A mixture of analysis methods, including a joint model analysis designed to explicitly account for uncertainty in estimated decision urgency values, revealed weak-to-strong evidence in favor of a relationship between decision urgency and early life adversity, suggesting a possible effect of life history strategy on even the most basic decisions.
