Tracing the impact of childhood maltreatment on adolescent aggression and victimization: A longitudinal study

Background

Although previous research has documented the adverse effects of childhood maltreatment, most studies have treated the cycle of violence and the cycle of victimization as distinct phenomena, lacking a unified theoretical framework. Moreover, limited empirical attention has been given to attention problems as a potential mediating mechanism linking childhood maltreatment to later outcomes.

Objective

This study examined whether childhood maltreatment predicted adolescent aggressive behavior and bullying victimization, and further investigated whether these associations were mediated by attention problems.

Participants

Data were drawn from 1803 participants (3606 observations in total) in the Fragile Families and Child Well-being Study, using data from Wave 5 (Year 9) and Wave 6 (Year 15).

Methods

A balanced panel dataset was constructed and analyzed using the Double Machine Learning (DML) method to estimate robust causal effects.

Results

The findings indicated that (1) childhood maltreatment was positively associated with both adolescent aggression and bullying victimization, and (2) attention problems significantly mediated both associations.

Conclusions

This study advanced an integrated understanding of the developmental consequences of childhood maltreatment by linking the cycles of violence and victimization. It further identified attention problems as a key mechanism and a promising target for early intervention efforts.