Revised: This Reviewed Preprint has been revised by the authors in response to the previous round of peer review; the eLife assessment and the public reviews have been updated where necessary by the editors and peer reviewers. This is a very important paper, using a large dataset to definitively understand a phenomenon so far addressed using a range of diverging definitions and methods, typically with insufficient statistical power.
This important study uses convincing evidence to compare how different operationalizations of adverse childhood experience exposure related to patterns of skin conductance response during a fear conditioning task in a large sample of adults.
Specifically, the authors compared the following operationalizations: dichotomization of the sample into "exposed" and "non-exposed" categories, cumulative adversity exposure, specificity of adversity exposure, and dimensional threat versus deprivation adversity exposure. The paper is thoughtfully framed and provides clear descriptions and rationale for procedures, as well as package version information and code. The authors' overall aim of translating theoretical models of adversity into statistical models, and comparing the explanatory power of each model, respectively, is an important and helpful addition to the literature.
Several outstanding strengths of this paper are the large sample size and its primary aim of statistically comparing leading theoretical models of adversity exposure in the context of skin conductance response.
This paper also helpfully reports Cohen's d effect sizes, which aid in interpreting the magnitude of the findings. The methods and results are thorough and well-described. Here, the authors compare how different operationalizations of adverse childhood experience exposure related to patterns of skin conductance response during a fear conditioning task.
