Development of Proactive Control and Anxiety Among Behaviorally Inhibited Adolescents

Fast food and anxiety symptoms of Chinese multi-ethnic adolescents: The moderating role of regulatory emotional self-efficacy

BACKGROUND

Although previous studies demonstrated an association between fast food intake and anxiety symptoms in adolescents, this relationship has not been studied in Chinese multi-ethnic adolescents. The purpose of this study is to investigate the aforementioned association and the potential moderating effect of regulatory emotional self-efficacy (RESE) among Chinese multi-ethnic adolescents.

METHODS

A cluster random sampling of 8500 middle school students from 11 counties in Yunnan province was conducted. The Depression Anxiety Stress Scale-21 was utilized to assess anxiety symptoms, while the food frequency questionnaire was employed to gather data on eating behaviors. The association between fast food intake, RESE, and anxiety symptoms was analyzed using generalized linear models. The moderating effect of RESE on the association between fast food intake and anxiety symptoms was examined using structural equation models.

RESULTS

The positive rate of anxiety symptoms in middle school students was 48.5 % (4120/8500). The positive rate of depressive symptoms in females (53.3 %, 2301/4316) was higher than that in males (43.5 %, 1819/4184). Chinese fast food intake (males vs females: β = 0.26, 95%CI:0.14-0.39; β = 0.16, 95%CI:0.02-0.29), expressing positive affect (β = -0.04, 95%CI:-0.07-0.01; β = -0.06, 95%CI:-0.10-0.03) and managing anger/irritation affect (β = -0.11, 95%CI:-0.14-0.08; β = -0.16, 95%CI:-0.19-0.12) was associated with anxiety symptoms in males and females (all P < 0.05). Takeaway fast food intake (β = 0.19, 95%CI:0.02-0.35) and managing despondency/distress affect (β = -0.08, 95%CI:-0.12-0.04, P < 0.001) was associated with anxiety symptoms in females (all P < 0.05). RESE significantly inversely moderated the association between fast food intake and anxiety symptoms (all participants: β = -0.11; males: β = - 0.08; females: β = - 0.14; all P < 0.01).

LIMITATIONS

Association observed in the cross-sectional study is uncertain and need to be confirmed in cohort studies.

CONCLUSION

Our findings suggest that fast food intake may be associated with an increased risk of anxiety symptoms among Chinese multi-ethnic adolescents, while good RESE can potentially mitigate this risk.

Longitudinal relations among temperament, cognitive control, and anxiety: From toddlerhood to late adolescence

Children with a history of behaviorally inhibited (BI) temperament face a heightened risk for anxiety disorders and often use control strategies that are less planful. Although these relations have been observed concurrently in early childhood, middle childhood, and adolescence, few studies leverage longitudinal data to examine long-term prospective relations between cognitive control and anxiety. Using longitudinal data from 149 adolescents (55% female; from predominantly White middle-class families), we assessed temperament in toddlerhood and cognitive control and anxiety at 4, 12, 15, and 18 years of age. At age 4, separate measures of task switching and inhibitory control were obtained via the Dimensional Change Card Sort and Stroop tasks, respectively. At 12, 15, and 18 years of age, planful control was assessed with the AX-Continuous Performance Test, and anxiety symptoms were assessed via self-report. Growth curve models revealed that children with greater inhibitory control at age 4, regardless of BI status, experienced a sharper increase in anxiety symptoms across adolescence. Children with heightened BI during early childhood displayed lower levels of planful control at age 12, but experienced a more rapid improvement in these skills across adolescence. Children with greater task switching ability at age 4 displayed higher levels of planful control at age 12, but experienced a smaller increase in these skills across adolescence. Finally, children's growth rate for anxiety was unrelated to their growth rate for planful control. These findings reveal that early-life temperament, cognitive control, and anxiety remain interconnected across development, from toddlerhood to at least late adolescence. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Annual Research Review: Developmental pathways linking early behavioral inhibition to later anxiety

Behavioral Inhibition is a temperament identified in the first years of life that enhances the risk for development of anxiety during late childhood and adolescence. Amongst children characterized with this temperament, only around 40 percent go on to develop anxiety disorders, meaning that more than half of these children do not. Over the past 20 years, research has documented within-child and socio-contextual factors that support differing developmental pathways. This review provides a historical perspective on the research documenting the origins of this temperament, its biological correlates, and the factors that enhance or mitigate risk for development of anxiety. We review as well, research findings from two longitudinal cohorts that have identified moderators of behavioral inhibition in understanding pathways to anxiety. Research on these moderators has led us to develop the Detection and Dual Control (DDC) framework to understand differing developmental trajectories among behaviorally inhibited children. In this review, we use this framework to explain why and how specific cognitive and socio-contextual factors influence differential pathways to anxiety versus resilience.

Relations Between Executive Functioning and Internalizing Symptoms Vary as a Function of Frontoparietal-amygdala Resting State Connectivity

The prefrontal cortex and the frontoparietal network are associated with a variety of regulatory behaviors. Functional connections between these brain regions and the amygdala are implicated in risk for anxiety disorders. The prefrontal cortex and frontoparietal network are also linked to executive functioning, or behaviors that help orient action towards higher order goals. Where much research has been focused on deleterious effects of under-controlled behavior, a body of work suggests that over-controlled behavior may also pose a risk for internalizing problems. Indeed, while work suggests that high levels of attention shifting may still be protective against internalizing problems, there is evidence that high levels of inhibitory control may be a risk factor for socioemotional difficulties. In the ABCD sample, which offers large sample sizes as well as sociodemographic diversity, we test the interaction between frontoparietal network-amygdala resting state functional connectivity and executive functioning behaviors on longitudinal changes in internalizing symptoms from approximately 10 to 12 years of age. We found that higher proficiency in attention shifting indeed predicts fewer internalizing behaviors over time. In addition, higher proficiency in inhibitory control predicts fewer internalizing symptoms over time, but only for children showing resting state connectivity moderately above the sample average between the frontoparietal network and amygdala. This finding supports the idea that top-down control may not be adaptive for all children, and relations between executive functioning and anxiety risk may vary as a function of trait-level regulation.

Attentional biases in human anxiety

Across clinical and subclinical samples, anxiety has been associated with increased attentional capture by cues signaling danger. Various cognitive models attribute the onset and maintenance of anxiety symptoms to maladaptive selective information processing. In this brief review, we 1) describe the evidence for the relations between anxiety and attention bias toward threat, 2) discuss the neurobiology of anxiety-related differences in threat bias, 3) summarize work investigating the developmental origins of attention bias toward threat, and 4) examine efforts to translate threat bias research into clinical intervention. Future directions in each area are discussed, including the use of novel analytic approaches improving characterization of threat-processing-related brain networks, clarifying the role of cognitive control in the development of attention bias toward threat, and the need for larger, well-controlled randomized clinical trials examining moderators and mediators of treatment response. Ultimately, this work has important implications for understanding the etiology of and for intervening on anxiety difficulties among children and adults.