Questionnaire links positive childhood experiences to adult resilience

A grandparent doing different voices for The Gruffalo is the kind of memory that rarely appears in a chart of childhood hardship. A school bus driver can matter too. Researchers at Northeastern University have now built a questionnaire designed to measure those positive experiences—and linked them to better mental-health outcomes in adulthood.

Kelsie Lopez, a psychology postdoctoral researcher at Northeastern’s Center for Cognitive and Brain Health, worked with psychology professor Laurel Gabard-Durnam and colleagues from Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania. Their POS-DEV scale organizes supportive childhood experiences into predictability, opportunity and safety: knowing who would care for you after school, having chances to form close relationships, and feeling physically and emotionally protected.

Around 1,200 participants rated how true statements were of their childhood, from “very true” to “not at all true,” using a four-point scale. They also completed measures of adverse childhood experiences, current anxiety and depression, and resilience. The participants were aged 18 to 65 and represented a range of socioeconomic backgrounds.

The result was not that positive memories cancel difficult ones. Positive childhood experiences were linked with lower depression and anxiety and greater resilience in adulthood, even after hardship and socioeconomic status were taken into account. Unfavorable experiences were still associated with higher anxiety and depression. Each category added information the other could not provide.

And concretely? The scale gives researchers a way to ask what support was present, not only what went wrong. That could help make the contribution of relationships and opportunities visible in studies of lifelong health. The participants named grandparents, aunts, uncles, teachers, coaches and spiritual leaders—but also a bus driver and someone from a biker bar. The findings come from retrospective reports and show associations, not proof that one person or experience caused a later mental-health outcome.