It is clear that child maltreatment is a large scale issue that affects a significant number of children. Research regarding the effects of maltreatment on children’s cognitive function is lacking. There is evidence that maltreatment as a whole has a deleterious effect on academic achievement and cognitive outcomes. This research focuses on maltreatment as a combined group, comparing maltreated children as a whole to non-maltreated children. The majority of the research focuses on maltreatment as a combined group, instead of separating out distinct groups such as abuse and neglect. The present study aimed to explore the impact of maltreatment on cognitive outcomes depending on the form or forms of maltreatment experienced. Specifically how do children who experienced different forms of maltreatment perform on the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-Fourth Edition? The present study was exploratory; information gathered from this study has been used to propose future directions and aims for more large scale and long term studies.

The participants in this study were 80 children, ages 5-13 from the Walker School based in Needham, Massachusetts. These children all had documented histories of maltreatment and data from a previous administration of the WISC-IV, post maltreatment, on file. Groups were formed based on the type or types of maltreatment experienced and included: physical abuse, neglect, sexual abuse, 2 types of maltreatment, and 3 forms of maltreatment. Their scores across the WISC-IV measures were compared and age-equivalent scores were calculated.

Results indicated that, overall, children who were physically abused only had the fewest cognitive deficits of all of the maltreatment groups. Children who were neglected only had the greatest cognitive impairments of maltreated children who had experienced only one form of maltreatment. Children who experienced two forms of maltreatment had greater and more pervasive deficits, and children who experienced three forms of maltreatment had even greater deficits still. Automatic skills were shown to be highly vulnerable to maltreatment. Overall, maltreated children performed more poorly on cognitive tasks than did their non-maltreated peers.