Researchers have been mining data from the ABCD Study — one of the largest long-term studies of adolescent brain development, following thousands of kids from ages 9 to 14 — to understand how thinking skills like memory, attention, and self-control relate to mental health as kids grow up. After reviewing more than 70 published papers, a clear pattern emerged: kids who struggled with executive function and working memory (basically, the mental skills used to plan, focus, and control impulses) were consistently more likely to show symptoms of ADHD and disruptive behavior. This link held up across many different types of analysis and was backed up by brain imaging showing differences in the regions responsible for planning and self-regulation.
Things got messier when it came to anxiety and depression. Kids with more internalizing symptoms tended to score lower on tests of flexible problem-solving, but sometimes scored higher on vocabulary and general knowledge — a surprising split that suggests these conditions don’t affect thinking in one simple direction. Interestingly, some of these cognitive struggles seemed to piggyback on co-occurring behavioral issues rather than being a direct effect of anxiety or depression themselves. One of the most striking findings involved psychotic-like experiences (things like unusual beliefs or perceptual disturbances), where cognitive differences — particularly in working memory, language, and processing speed — showed up early, persisted over time, and tracked closely with how symptoms changed year to year. That kind of tight, lasting connection wasn’t seen nearly as clearly in other conditions.
The review also flagged where the evidence is thinner: things like suicidality, OCD symptoms, substance use, and autism have far fewer studies to draw on so far, though early patterns suggest connections to memory, language skills, and (in the case of substance use) some decline in memory and self-control following cannabis exposure. Overall, the take-home message is that thinking skills aren’t just a side effect of mental health struggles — they seem to be woven into the developmental story itself, which could eventually help identify at-risk kids earlier and shape more targeted support.
Link to full study: Redirecting