1
|
Morales S, Bowers ME, Shuffrey L, Ziegler K, Troller-Renfree S, Hernandez A, Leach SC, McGrath M, Ola C, Leve LD, Nozadi SS, Swingler MM, Lai JS, Schweitzer JB, Fifer W, Camargo CA, Khurana Hershey GK, Shapiro ALB, Keating DP, Hartert TV, Deoni S, Ferrara A, Elliott AJ. Maternal education prospectively predicts child neurocognitive function: An environmental influences on child health outcomes study. Dev Psychol 2024:2024-56629-001. [PMID: 38407105 DOI: 10.1037/dev0001642] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 02/27/2024]
Abstract
A large body of research has established a relation between maternal education and children's neurocognitive functions, such as executive function and language. However, most studies have focused on early childhood and relatively few studies have examined associations with changes in maternal education over time. Consequently, it remains unclear if early maternal education is longitudinally related to neurocognitive functions in children, adolescents, and young adults. In addition, the associations between changes in maternal education across development and more broadly defined neurocognitive outcomes remain relatively untested. The current study leveraged a large multicohort sample to examine the longitudinal relations between perinatal maternal education and changes in maternal education during development with children's, adolescents', and young adults' neurocognitive functions (N = 2,688; Mage = 10.32 years; SDage = 4.26; range = 3-20 years). Moreover, we examined the differential effects of perinatal maternal education and changes in maternal education across development on executive function and language performance. Perinatal maternal education was positively associated with children's later overall neurocognitive function. This longitudinal relation was stronger for language than executive function. In addition, increases in maternal education were related to improved language performance but were not associated with executive functioning performance. Our findings support perinatal maternal education as an important predictor of neurocognitive outcomes later in development. Moreover, our results suggest that examining how maternal education changes across development can provide important insights that can help inform policies and interventions designed to foster neurocognitive development. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).
Collapse
Affiliation(s)
| | - Maureen E Bowers
- Department of Human Development and Quantitative Methodology, University of Maryland
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | - Cindy Ola
- Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Medicine, Seattle Children's Research Institute, University of Washington
| | - Leslie D Leve
- Department of Counseling Psychology and Human Services, University of Oregon
| | | | - Margaret M Swingler
- Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
| | - Jin-Shei Lai
- Department of Medical Social Sciences, Northwestern University
| | - Julie B Schweitzer
- Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, University of California, Davis
| | | | | | | | - Allison L B Shapiro
- Department of Pediatrics, Section of Endocrinology, University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus
| | | | - Tina V Hartert
- Department of Medicine, Division of Allergy, Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine, Vanderbilt University School of Medicine
| | - Sean Deoni
- Department of Pediatrics, Brown University
| | | | | |
Collapse
|
2
|
Vraga EK, Bode L, Smithson AB, Troller-Renfree S. Accidentally Attentive:Comparing visual, close-ended, and open-ended measures of attention on social media. Computers in Human Behavior 2019. [DOI: 10.1016/j.chb.2019.05.017] [Citation(s) in RCA: 28] [Impact Index Per Article: 5.6] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/17/2022]
|
3
|
Troller-Renfree S, Zeanah CH, Nelson CA, Fox NA. Neural and Cognitive Factors Influencing the Emergence of Psychopathology: Insights From the Bucharest Early Intervention Project. Child Dev Perspect 2017. [PMID: 29531577 DOI: 10.1111/cdep.12251] [Citation(s) in RCA: 14] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/28/2022]
Abstract
The adverse effects of institutionalized care and psychosocial deprivation have been documented for more than 100 years. Children who have been raised in institutions are at heightened risk of developing internalizing and externalizing disorders. Given the profound biological and psychological effects of institutional rearing, identifying neural and cognitive factors that influence the emergence of psychopathology in institutionalized children is of great interest. Using data from the Bucharest Early Intervention Project, a randomized control study on the effects of institutional care and a foster care intervention, this article examines two factors that appear to influence the emergence of psychopathology in children who have been institutionalized-neural indices of cognitive control and visual attention biases.
Collapse
|
4
|
Troller-Renfree S, Nelson CA, Zeanah CH, Fox NA. Deficits in error monitoring are associated with externalizing but not internalizing behaviors among children with a history of institutionalization. J Child Psychol Psychiatry 2016; 57:1145-53. [PMID: 27569003 PMCID: PMC5047056 DOI: 10.1111/jcpp.12604] [Citation(s) in RCA: 25] [Impact Index Per Article: 3.1] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Submit a Manuscript] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Accepted: 04/26/2016] [Indexed: 11/29/2022]
Abstract
BACKGROUND Children raised in institutions are at increased risk of developing internalizing and externalizing problems. However, not all children raised in institutions develop psychopathology. Deficits in error monitoring may be one risk pathway for children with a history of institutionalization given that these skills are related to both internalizing and externalizing psychiatric disorders. Error monitoring and the neural circuitry that supports it have a protracted developmental time course and are highly susceptible to the effects of adversity. As such, they may play an important moderating role between a history of institutional rearing and subsequent psychopathology. METHODS We investigated the impact of psychosocial deprivation on behavioral and neural responses (event-related potentials: ERPs) to a Flanker task assessing error monitoring and the relations between these measures and psychopathology for 12-year-old children in the Bucharest Early Intervention Project (BEIP). The BEIP involves two groups of institutionalized children randomly assigned in infancy to receive either a foster care intervention (FCG) or care as usual (CAUG). RESULTS Children who experienced institutional care, particularly those in the CAUG, showed perturbed behavioral performance and ERPs on the Flanker task. Additionally, an ERP measure of error monitoring [error-related negativity (ERN)] moderated the relations between time spent in institutions and externalizing and ADHD behaviors. When the amplitude of the ERN was smaller, time spent in institutional care was positively related to ADHD and externalizing behaviors, whereas time spent in institutions was unrelated to externalizing problems when children evidenced a larger ERN. Neural correlates of error monitoring did not moderate the relations between time spent in institutionalized care and internalizing behaviors. CONCLUSIONS Exposure to institutional care early in life may affect brain circuitry associated with error monitoring. Perturbations in this neural circuitry in combination with psychosocial deprivation are possibly a risk pathway associated with the development of externalizing and ADHD problems.
Collapse
Affiliation(s)
- Sonya Troller-Renfree
- Department of Human Development and Quantitative Methodology, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, USA.
| | - Charles A. Nelson
- Harvard Medical School, Boston Children's Hospital,Harvard Center on the Developing Child, Cambridge, MA,Harvard Graduate School of Education, Cambridge, MA
| | | | - Nathan A. Fox
- Department of Human Development and Quantitative Methodology, University of Maryland, College Park, MD
| |
Collapse
|
5
|
Troller-Renfree S, McLaughlin KA, Sheridan MA, Nelson CA, Zeanah CH, Fox NA. The beneficial effects of a positive attention bias amongst children with a history of psychosocial deprivation. Biol Psychol 2016; 122:110-120. [PMID: 27109625 DOI: 10.1016/j.biopsycho.2016.04.008] [Citation(s) in RCA: 22] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.8] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/30/2015] [Revised: 03/23/2016] [Accepted: 04/14/2016] [Indexed: 12/20/2022]
Abstract
Children raised in institutions experience psychosocial deprivation that has detrimental influences on attention and mental health. The current study examined patterns of attention biases in children from institutions who were randomized at approximately 21.6 months to receive either a high-quality foster care intervention or care-as-usual. At age 12, children performed a dot-probe task and indices of attention bias were calculated. Additionally, children completed a social stress paradigm and cortisol reactivity was computed. Children randomized into foster care (N=40) exhibited an attention bias toward positive stimuli but not threat, whereas children who received care-as-usual (N=40) and a never-institutionalized comparison group (N=47) showed no bias. Stability of foster care placement was related to positive bias, while instability of foster care placement was related to threat bias. The magnitude of the positive bias was associated with fewer internalizing problems and better coping mechanisms. Within the foster care group, positive attention bias was related to less blunted cortisol reactivity.
Collapse
Affiliation(s)
- Sonya Troller-Renfree
- Department of Human Development and Quantitative Methodology, University of Maryland, College Park, United States.
| | - Katie A McLaughlin
- Department of Psychology, University of Washington, Seattle, United States
| | - Margaret A Sheridan
- Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, United States
| | - Charles A Nelson
- Harvard Medical School, United States; Boston Children's Hospital, United States; Harvard Center on the Developing Child, United States; Harvard Graduate School of Education, United States
| | - Charles H Zeanah
- Tulane University School of Medicine, New Orleans, United States
| | - Nathan A Fox
- Department of Human Development and Quantitative Methodology, University of Maryland, College Park, United States
| |
Collapse
|
6
|
Sylvester CM, Barch DM, Harms MP, Belden AC, Oakberg TJ, Gold AL, White LK, Benson BE, Troller-Renfree S, Degnan KA, Henderson HA, Luby JL, Fox NA, Pine DS. Early Childhood Behavioral Inhibition Predicts Cortical Thickness in Adulthood. J Am Acad Child Adolesc Psychiatry 2016; 55:122-9.e1. [PMID: 26802779 PMCID: PMC4724382 DOI: 10.1016/j.jaac.2015.11.007] [Citation(s) in RCA: 27] [Impact Index Per Article: 3.4] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Submit a Manuscript] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/30/2015] [Revised: 09/22/2015] [Accepted: 11/19/2015] [Indexed: 01/20/2023]
Abstract
OBJECTIVE Behavioral inhibition (BI) during early childhood predicts risk for anxiety disorders and altered cognitive control in adolescence. Although BI has been linked to variation in brain function through adulthood, few studies have examined relations between early childhood BI and adult brain structure. METHOD The relation between early childhood BI and cortical thickness in adulthood was examined in a cohort of individuals followed since early childhood (N = 53, mean age 20.5 years). Analyses tested whether anxiety and/or cognitive control during adolescence moderated relations between BI and cortical thickness. Cognitive control was measured with the Eriksen Flanker Task. Initial analyses examined cortical thickness in regions of interest previously implicated in BI, anxiety disorders, and cognitive control: dorsal anterior cingulate (dACC), anterior insula (aI), and subgenual anterior cingulate (sgACC); and volumes of the amygdala and hippocampus. Exploratory analyses examined relations across the prefrontal cortex. RESULTS BI during early childhood related to thinner dACC in adulthood. Neither anxiety nor cognitive control moderated this relation. A stronger congruency effect on the Eriksen Flanker Task during adolescence independently related to thinner dACC in adulthood. Higher anxiety during adolescence related to thicker cortex in the right ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (VLPFC) in adulthood among those with low BI as children. CONCLUSION Temperament in early childhood and the interaction between temperament and later anxiety relate to adult brain structure. These results are consistent with prior work associating BI and anxiety with functional brain variability in the dACC and VLPFC.
Collapse
Affiliation(s)
| | | | | | | | | | - Andrea L. Gold
- The National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) Intramural Research Program, Bethesda, MD
| | - Lauren K. White
- The National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) Intramural Research Program, Bethesda, MD
| | - Brenda E. Benson
- The National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) Intramural Research Program, Bethesda, MD
| | | | | | | | - Joan L. Luby
- Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis
| | | | - Daniel S. Pine
- The National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) Intramural Research Program, Bethesda, MD
| |
Collapse
|
7
|
Barker TV, Troller-Renfree S, Pine DS, Fox NA. Individual differences in social anxiety affect the salience of errors in social contexts. Cogn Affect Behav Neurosci 2015; 15:723-35. [PMID: 25967929 PMCID: PMC4641754 DOI: 10.3758/s13415-015-0360-9] [Citation(s) in RCA: 43] [Impact Index Per Article: 4.8] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 01/07/2023]
Abstract
The error-related negativity (ERN) is an event-related potential that occurs approximately 50 ms after an erroneous response. The magnitude of the ERN is influenced by contextual factors, such as when errors are made during social evaluation. The ERN is also influenced by individual differences in anxiety, and it is elevated among anxious individuals. However, little research has examined how individual differences in anxiety interact with contextual factors to impact the ERN. Social anxiety involves fear and apprehension of social evaluation. In the present study, we explored how individual differences in social anxiety interact with social contexts to modulate the ERN. The ERN was measured in 43 young adults characterized as being either high or low in social anxiety, while they completed a flanker task in two contexts: alone and during social evaluation. The results revealed a significant interaction between social anxiety and context, such that the ERN was enhanced in a social relative to a nonsocial context only among highly socially anxious individuals. Furthermore, the degree of such enhancement significantly correlated with individual differences in social anxiety. These findings demonstrate that social anxiety is characterized by enhanced neural activity to errors in social-evaluative contexts.
Collapse
Affiliation(s)
- Tyson V Barker
- Department of Human Development and Quantitative Methodology, University of Maryland, 3304 Benjamin Building, College Park, MD, 20742, USA.
| | - Sonya Troller-Renfree
- Department of Human Development and Quantitative Methodology, University of Maryland, 3304 Benjamin Building, College Park, MD, 20742, USA
| | - Daniel S Pine
- Section on Development and Affective Neuroscience, National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), Bethesda, MD, USA
| | - Nathan A Fox
- Department of Human Development and Quantitative Methodology, University of Maryland, 3304 Benjamin Building, College Park, MD, 20742, USA
| |
Collapse
|
8
|
Troller-Renfree S, McDermott JM, Nelson CA, Zeanah CH, Fox NA. The effects of early foster care intervention on attention biases in previously institutionalized children in Romania. Dev Sci 2014; 18:713-22. [PMID: 25439678 DOI: 10.1111/desc.12261] [Citation(s) in RCA: 80] [Impact Index Per Article: 8.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/07/2014] [Accepted: 09/02/2014] [Indexed: 12/30/2022]
Abstract
Children raised in institutions experience psychosocial deprivation that can negatively impact attention skills and emotion regulation, which subsequently may influence behavioral regulation and social relationships. The current study examined visual attention biases in 8-year-old children who were part of the Bucharest Early Intervention Project (BEIP). Relations among attention biases and concurrent social outcomes were also investigated. In early childhood, 136 children abandoned at birth or shortly thereafter into institutional care were randomized to receive a high-quality foster care intervention or care-as-usual within the context of the Bucharest Early Intervention Project (BEIP). At 8 years of age, 50 care-as-usual, 55 foster care, and 52 community controls performed a behavioral dot-probe task, and indices of attention biases to threat and positive stimuli were calculated. Concurrent data on social behavior were collected. Children placed into the foster care intervention had a significant attention bias toward positive stimuli, while children who received care-as-usual had a significant bias toward threat. Children in the foster care intervention had a significantly larger positive bias when compared to the care-as-usual group. A positive bias was related to more social engagement, more prosocial behavior, less externalizing disorders, and less emotionally withdrawn behavior. The magnitude of positive bias was predicted by age of placement into foster care among children with a history of institutionalization. An attention bias towards positive stimuli was associated with reduced risk for behavioral problems amongst children who experienced early psychosocial deprivation. Research assessing attention biases in children experiencing early environmental stress may refine our understanding of the mechanisms underlying risk for later psychiatric and social disorders and inform prevention efforts.
Collapse
Affiliation(s)
- Sonya Troller-Renfree
- Department of Human Development and Quantitative Methodology, University of Maryland, USA
| | | | - Charles A Nelson
- Harvard Medical School, USA.,Boston Children's Hospital, USA.,Harvard Center on the Developing Child, USA.,Harvard Graduate School of Education, USA
| | | | - Nathan A Fox
- Department of Human Development and Quantitative Methodology, University of Maryland, USA
| |
Collapse
|
9
|
Righi G, Westerlund A, Congdon EL, Troller-Renfree S, Nelson CA. Infants' experience-dependent processing of male and female faces: insights from eye tracking and event-related potentials. Dev Cogn Neurosci 2014; 8:144-52. [PMID: 24200421 PMCID: PMC3960339 DOI: 10.1016/j.dcn.2013.09.005] [Citation(s) in RCA: 31] [Impact Index Per Article: 3.1] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/15/2013] [Revised: 09/25/2013] [Accepted: 09/27/2013] [Indexed: 11/23/2022] Open
Abstract
The goal of the present study was to investigate infants' processing of female and male faces. We used an event-related potential (ERP) priming task, as well as a visual-paired comparison (VPC) eye tracking task to explore how 7-month-old "female expert" infants differed in their responses to faces of different genders. Female faces elicited larger N290 amplitudes than male faces. Furthermore, infants showed a priming effect for female faces only, whereby the N290 was significantly more negative for novel females compared to primed female faces. The VPC experiment was designed to test whether infants could reliably discriminate between two female and two male faces. Analyses showed that infants were able to differentiate faces of both genders. The results of the present study suggest that 7-month olds with a large amount of female face experience show a processing advantage for forming a neural representation of female faces, compared to male faces. However, the enhanced neural sensitivity to the repetition of female faces is not due to the infants' inability to discriminate male faces. Instead, the combination of results from the two tasks suggests that the differential processing for female faces may be a signature of expert-level processing.
Collapse
Affiliation(s)
- Giulia Righi
- Department of Psychology, University of Massachusetts-Amherst, Amherst, MA, USA; Laboratories of Cognitive Neuroscience, Division of Developmental Medicine, Boston Children's Hospital, Boston, MA, USA; Yale Child Study Center, New Haven, CT, USA
| | - Alissa Westerlund
- Laboratories of Cognitive Neuroscience, Division of Developmental Medicine, Boston Children's Hospital, Boston, MA, USA
| | - Eliza L Congdon
- Department of Psychology, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA
| | - Sonya Troller-Renfree
- Laboratories of Cognitive Neuroscience, Division of Developmental Medicine, Boston Children's Hospital, Boston, MA, USA
| | - Charles A Nelson
- Laboratories of Cognitive Neuroscience, Division of Developmental Medicine, Boston Children's Hospital, Boston, MA, USA; Departments of Pediatrics and Neuroscience, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA; Harvard Center on the Developing Child, Cambridge, MA, USA.
| |
Collapse
|
10
|
McDermott JM, Troller-Renfree S, Vanderwert R, Nelson CA, Zeanah CH, Fox NA. Psychosocial deprivation, executive functions, and the emergence of socio-emotional behavior problems. Front Hum Neurosci 2013; 7:167. [PMID: 23675333 PMCID: PMC3650621 DOI: 10.3389/fnhum.2013.00167] [Citation(s) in RCA: 72] [Impact Index Per Article: 6.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/15/2013] [Accepted: 04/16/2013] [Indexed: 11/17/2022] Open
Abstract
Early psychosocial deprivation can negatively impact the development of executive functions (EFs). Here we explore the impact of early psychosocial deprivation on behavioral and physiological measures (i.e., event-related potentials; ERPs) of two facets of EF, inhibitory control and response monitoring, and their associations with internalizing and externalizing outcomes in the Bucharest Early Intervention Project (BEIP; Zeanah et al., 2003). This project focuses on two groups of children placed in institutions shortly after birth and then randomly assigned in infancy to either a foster care intervention or to remain in their current institutional setting. A group of community controls was recruited for comparison. The current study assesses these children at 8-years of age examining the effects of early adversity, the potential effects of the intervention on EF and the role of EF skills in socio-emotional outcomes. Results reveal exposure to early psychosocial deprivation was associated with impaired inhibitory control on a flanker task. Children in the foster care intervention exhibited better response monitoring compared to children who remained in the institution on the error-related positivity (Pe). Moreover, among children in the foster care intervention those who exhibited larger error-related negativity (ERN) responses had lower levels of socio-emotional behavior problems. Overall, these data identify specific aspects of EF that contribute to adaptive and maladaptive socio-emotional outcomes among children experiencing early psychosocial deprivation.
Collapse
|