Trial reportPloS one2020
Cognitive flexibility and perceived threat from COVID-19 mediate the relationship between childhood maltreatment and state anxiety.
Trial report in PloS one, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 23 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
23 citing papers in PubMed, 52 citations in OpenAlex.
- Profiles of Early Life Stress and Their Interaction With Proximal Stress in Early Adulthood: A Person-Centered Approach.Journal of clinical psychology · 2026Article
- Childhood Psychological Maltreatment, Psychological Flexibility, Family Conflict, and Subjective Happiness in University Students: A Serial Mediation Model.The Psychiatric quarterly · 2025Article
- Psychological flexibility mediates the long-term impact of adverse interpersonal experiences in childhood and adolescence.BMC psychology · 2025Article
- Article
- Longitudinal associations between family functioning and generalized anxiety among adolescents: the mediating role of self-identity and cognitive flexibility.BMC psychology · 2024Article
- Childhood Maltreatment and Creativity among Chinese College Students: A Serial Mediation Model.Journal of Intelligence · 2023Article
- Prevalence of Poor Mental Health Days and Adverse Childhood Experience Reporting in U.S. Adults Before and After COVID-19.Community mental health journal · 2023Article
- A Culturally Responsive Trauma-Informed Public Health Emergency Framework for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Communities in Australia, Developed during COVID-19.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2022Review
- Adaptive responding to prolonged stress exposure: A binational study on the impact of flexibility on latent profiles of cognitive, emotional and behavioural responses to the COVID-19 pandemic.Health & social care in the community · 2022Article
- Adverse Childhood Experiences and COVID-19 Stress on Changes in Mental Health among Young Adults.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2022Article
- Associations between early-life stress exposure and internalizing symptomatology during the COVID-19 pandemic: Assessing the role of neurobehavioral mediators.Biological psychiatry global open science · 2022Article
- Stress-related psychopathology during the COVID-19 pandemic.Behaviour research and therapy · 2022Review
- Disentangling the associations between past childhood adversity and psychopathology during the COVID-19 pandemic: The mediating roles of specific pandemic stressors and coping strategies.Child abuse & neglect · 2022Article
- Social support, psychological flexibility and coping mediate the association between COVID-19 related stress exposure and psychological distress.Scientific reports · 2022Article
- A Review Study on the Trends of Psychological Challenges, Coping Ways, and Public Support During the COVID-19 Pandemic in the Vulnerable Populations in the United States.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2022Review
- The Effect of Perceived Threat Avoidability of COVID-19 on Coping Strategies and Psychic Anxiety Among Chinese College Students in the Early Stage of COVID-19 Pandemic.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2022Article
- Effects of Negative Emotions and Cognitive Characteristics on Impulse Buying During COVID-19.Frontiers in psychology · 2022Article
- The Influence of Adverse Childhood Experiences in Pain Management: Mechanisms, Processes, and Trauma-Informed Care.Frontiers in pain research (Lausanne, Switzerland) · 2022Review
- The Psychological Impacts During the Initial Phase of the COVID-19 Outbreak, and its Associated Factors Among Pastoral Community in West Omo Zone, South-West Ethiopia, 2020: A Community-Based Study.Psychology research and behavior management · 2021Article
- Influence of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Parenting Stress Across Asian Countries: A Cross-National Study.Frontiers in psychology · 2021Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Converging empirical evidence indicates that exposure to adversity in childhood is associated with increased vulnerability to mental health problems in adulthood. As early life adversity has the potential to alter an individual's appraisal of threat, we hypothesized that individuals exposed to adversity in childhood may also exhibit increased threat from environmental stressors, which in turn may impact their state anxiety levels. We examined the relations between adverse childhood experiences, assessed using the Adverse Childhood Experiences Scale (ACEs), perceived threat from COVID-19, and state anxiety in a sample of adults. Additionally, flexibility is implicated in adaptive coping with life's stressors so we also assessed participants' cognitive flexibility. Parallel mediation regression analyses revealed that both perceived threat from COVID-19 and flexibility in the appraisal of challenges mediated the influence of maltreatment, but not household dysfunction, on state anxiety. Our data indicate that experience with early life adversity in the form of maltreatment is associated with increased perceived threat from COVID-19, which results in higher anxiety levels for the individual. In contrast, childhood maltreatment is associated with reduced flexibility in appraising challenges, which in turn mediates the relationship between maltreatment and anxiety. The findings of this study adds to the limited literature on the impact of early life adversity on cognitive flexibility and highlights the psychological toll of COVID-19 on individuals who have been exposed to adverse childhood experiences.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.