(PS2-18) Early Adversity Moderates the Relationship Between Threat Perception and State Anxiety in Young Adulthood

Early adversity has consistently been linked to greater anxiety throughout life (Clark et al., 2010). These far-reaching effects may be partially explained by persisting perceptual sensitivity to threat and attentional biases towards threat cues (McLaughlin et al., 2020, Lakshman et al., 2020, Dudeney et al., 2015, Briggs‐Gowan et al., 2015). If threat sensitivity is a mechanism by which adversity in youth affects anxiety throughout the lifespan, then individuals who experienced greater adversity in the past may perceive more threat in their daily lives in the present and feel more anxious in response to that threat (Shechner & Bar-Haim, 2016, McLaughlin et al., 2009). Prior research has not shown how past traumatic events influence real-time patterns of threat perception and elicitation of state anxiety in young adulthood. Therefore, this project utilized time-series data to investigate whether past adversity predicts perception of threat and moderates the relationship between threat perception and anxiety within (N=137) undergraduate students over time. We hypothesized that individuals who had experienced greater adversity would show greater threat perception and a stronger association between perceived threat and anxiety.

Past adversity was measured by the Life Stressor Checklist-Revised (Wolfe, J., Kimerling, R., Brown, P., Chrestman, K., & Levin, K., 1997). Threat perception and anxiety were captured using ecological momentary assessment surveys administered 8 times a day for 14-21 days. Perceived threat was measured by asking whether participants had recently argued with someone, felt judged or criticized, experienced conflict or tension with someone, or experienced discrimination or prejudice, and if so, to what degree. Anxiety was measured by asking how anxious, restless, irritable, and fatigued they were currently feeling. 

Because of the nested structure of the EMA data, we employed multilevel mixed models using the NLME package in R. All available data were analyzed without exclusion to avoid potential analytic biases (Jacobson, 2020). In accordance with our pre-registered hypotheses, we first tested whether adversity predicted perceived threat: we found a nonsignificant positive association between adversity and perceived threat (β = 0.09, SE = 0.05, t(126) = 1.79, p = .076, d = 0.32). To test for moderation effects of past adversity on the perceived threat–anxiety relationship, we constructed a multilevel interaction model and person-mean centered perceived threat and anxiety. Contrary to our prediction, for those who had experienced greater adversity, the association between perceived threat and anxiety was dampened (β= -0.01, SE = 0.00, t(11033) = -3.12, p = .002, d = -0.06).

Greater past life adversity did not significantly predict greater overall perception of threat in young adulthood. However, at the low levels of adversity in our sample (mean LSC-R score of 16.46 / 150), past adversity seemed to provide a buffer between perceived threat and anxiety, suggesting that low levels of adversity may contribute to resilience. Future research should examine whether adversity interacts with perceived threat to influence anxiety differently in populations with greater exposure to trauma and adversity.