Cited by 315Child Abuse and TraumaStress Responses and CortisolResilience and Mental Health

Early life adversity reduces stress reactivity and enhances impulsive behavior: Implications for health behaviors

Open access
Lovallo, William R.·2013·International Journal of Psychophysiology

Abstract

Altered reactivity to stress, either in the direction of exaggerated reactivity or diminished reactivity, may signal a dysregulation of systems intended to maintain homeostasis and a state of good health. Evidence has accumulated that diminished reactivity to psychosocial stress may signal poor health outcomes. One source of diminished cortisol and autonomic reactivity is the experience of adverse rearing during childhood and adolescence. The Oklahoma Family Health Patterns Project has examined a cohort of 426 healthy young adults with and without a family history of alcoholism. Regardless of family history, persons who had experienced high degrees of adversity prior to age 16 had a constellation of changes including reduced cortisol and heart rate reactivity, diminished cognitive capacity, and unstable regulation of affect, leading to behavioral impulsivity and antisocial tendencies. We present a model whereby this constellation of physiological, cognitive, and affective tendencies is consistent with altered central dopaminergic activity leading to changes in brain function that may foster impulsive and risky behaviors. These in turn may promote greater use of alcohol other drugs along with adopting poor health behaviors. This model provides a pathway from early life adversity to low stress reactivity that forms a basis for risky behaviors and poor health outcomes.

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.1016/j.ijpsycho.2012.10.006

Cites

124 of 124 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

Claims the paper makes

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Claims other papers make about this one

Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?

  • In human studies and animal experimentation, ELA consistently predicts HPA dysregulation generally persisting into adulthood, including patterns of hyper-reactivity or hypo-reactivity.

    “In human studies and animal experimentation, ELA consistently predicts HPA dysregulation generally persisting into adulthood, including patterns of hyper-reactivity, suggesting potential acquired resistance to glucocorticoid negative feedback [29], or hypo-reactivity, suggesting possible attenuated stress sensitivity or exaggerated axis suppression [44].”

    From Biological embedding of childhood adversity: from physiological mechanisms to clinical implications (2017) · cites this paper as [44]

    Section 4.1 (page not supplied) reports that early adversity is associated with blunted cortisol responses in early adulthood, while noting that not all studies agree. The cited paper focuses on human studies and does not establish the sentence’s broader claim across animal experiments or its proposed explanation of exaggerated HPA-axis suppression. The hyper-reactivity clause is attached to a different citation. (LLM, conf=0.83)

    Experimental — accuracy not yet measured

Self-check

Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.

The self-check needs the paper’s full text.

Cites

Flagged first, then by citations

Cited by

Sorted by citations

Authors
Lovallo, W. R.
Affiliations
Oklahoma City VA Medical Center (US)
Corresponding author
Lovallo, William R.
Venue
International Journal of Psychophysiology
Publisher
Elsevier BV
Published
2013-10
Volume
90
Issue
1
Pages
8-16
ISSN
0167-8760 (ISSN-L)
OpenAlex
W2105588815
Cited by
315
References
124
Citations by year
2026: 14 · 2025: 17 · 2024: 26 · 2023: 27 · 2022: 35 · 2021: 29 · 2020: 31 · 2019: 36 · 2018: 29 · 2017: 20 · 2016: 20 · 2015: 18 · 2014: 8 · 2013: 5
FWCI
1.44
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Locations
  • International Journal of Psychophysiology (publishedVersion)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
  • Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (acceptedVersion)
  • PubMed Central (acceptedVersion)
Funders
  • Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Research Service
  • National Institutes of Health
  • NIAAA (AA12207, AA19691)
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Psychology › Clinical Psychology › Child Abuse and Trauma
  • Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Behavioral Neuroscience › Stress Responses and Cortisol
  • Social Sciences › Psychology › Clinical Psychology › Resilience and Mental Health
Keywords
childhood adversity, stress reactivity, cortisol response, heart rate reactivity, impulsive behavior, health risk behaviors, alcohol consumption, family history of alcoholism, dopaminergic activity, emotion regulation, cognitive ability
MeSH terms
Adolescent, Adult, Female, Humans, Hydrocortisone, Impulsive Behavior, Life Change Events, Male, Stress, Psychological, Health Behavior, Young Adult

About these checks

Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.

Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.

What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›

Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review