Adaptive regulation over adversity: Noradrenergic scaling and psychological resources differentiate attentional performance

Background: Childhood adversity has been consistently associated with cognitive difficulties; however, marked heterogeneity in outcomes challenges deterministic models of risk. Emerging evidence suggests that current adaptive regulation may better explain cognitive and physiological functioning than adversity exposure alone. Objective: To examine whether psychological risk—characterized by perceived stress, resilience, and protective factors—better predicts attentional performance and noradrenergic responsivity than childhood adversity exposure in individuals with high cumulative adversity. Methods: Participants were recruited from a community population characterized by elevated psychosocial adversity, with 62% reporting four or more Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs). Five psychological measures (ACEs, perceived stress, resilience, protective factors, and emotional dysregulation) were integrated using Linear Discriminant Analysis (LDA) to derive a latent psychological profile dimension (LD1). Participants completed a visuospatial attentional task with increasing cognitive load while pupil diameter was recorded as an index of arousal-linked neuromodulatory engagement. Results: Despite comparable ACE exposure across groups ( p  > .05), LD1 significantly differentiated participants according to current psychological adaptation. Individuals in the high-resource group—characterized by lower perceived stress and higher resilience—showed significantly higher attentional performance under high cognitive load ( p  = .009, d  = 0.89, 95% CI [0.25, 1.52]) and greater phasic pupil responses ( p  = .049, nonparametric permutation test, 10,000 permutations) than low-resource individuals. In contrast, ACE exposure alone did not significantly predict behavioral or physiological outcomes ( d  = 0.54, p  = .109). These findings indicate that psychological adaptation accounted for substantially greater variance in attentional and physiological responses than adversity exposure itself. Conclusions: Current adaptive psychological and physiological regulation, rather than childhood adversity exposure alone, appears to be a predominant factor of attentional functioning following adversity. Resilience-related processes may buffer vulnerability by preserving adaptive arousal responsivity under high cognitive demand.