The Neural and Behavior Correlates of Response Inhibition and Psychopathology in Children with and without Reading Difficulties

• In Event: 3-126 - Understanding and Empowering Student Learning and Development: From Cognitive Neuroscience Lab to student learning promotion

Integrative Statement

Children with poor academic performance often is lacking the ability to withhold a response and such deficits results in less time focusing on school-related activities but involving in more psychopathology (e.g., internalizing or externalizing problems). However, not all children with reading problems are behaviorally inhibited; nor displaying challenging behaviors. The current study aimed to examine (a) whether elementary children with reading difficulties are more likely to be behaviorally inhibited and show more psychopathology symptoms; (b) the neural correlates of inhibitory control (IC) by using dense-array ERPs and estimates of cortical activation in comparing elementary children with and without reading problems with a Go/Nogo paradigm.
Twenty-two children aged from seven to eleven and referred by parents as having reading difficulties; and 20 age-matched typically developing readers participated in this study. The participants with referred reading problems scored significantly lower on decoding, comprehension, and receptive vocabulary. IC was measured through a multidisciplinary approach. Behaviorally, IC(B) was measured with a parent-reported 7-item (e.g., can stop when is told to stop) questionnaire adopted from the Temperament in Middle Childhood Questionnaire (TMCQ; Simonds & Rothbart, 2006). On neural level, IC (N) was measured with an Affective and Neutral Go/No-go Task named The Zoo Game (280 trials in total; consisted of 75% go trials and 25% no-go trials). Children were asked to help a zoo keeper recapture escaped animals to respond via button-press (as fast and accurately as possible) as soon as they saw an animal on the screen unless it was the ‘monkey’. The psychopathology symptoms were measured with parent-reported Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL; Achenbach, 1991) and the self-reported Mood and Feeling Questionnaire (Angold & Costello, 1987).
The first research question was analyzed with One-way ANOVA indicated that participants with reading difficulties scored significantly higher on externalizing problems with the subscales of Attention Problem (F=1.80, p=.011) and Rule Breaking Behavior (F=2.89, p=.001) and mental health problems (F=4.78, p=.029). From the TMCQ report, though the significant behavior differences on parent-reported inhibitory control was not observed (F=.121, p=.369), the children with reading difficulties did score relatively lower (3.3 vs 3.5) on average in RI compared to normal readers. In terms of the second research question, both percentage accuracies of the Go/nogo task performance and scalp N2 activation were calculated for both conditions (Go vs. Nogo) and for each participant. These data were entered into a 2 (Condition; Go vs. Nogo) x 2 (Group; difficulty vs. no-difficulty) mixed model repeated measures analysis of variance (ANOVA) controlling for age and gender as a covariate. Post hoc test suggested that, for Nogo trials, children with reading problems had significantly lower accuracy (p=.025) and larger N2 amplitude compared to children without reading difficulties (p=.024). However, for Go trials, no significant different between groups were observed for both task accuracy (p=0.67) and scalp activation (p=.31).

Authors

• Qinxin Shi, Texas A&M University
  Presenting Author

• Huilin Sun, Texas A&M University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Marike Deutz, Utrecht University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Steven Woltering, Texas A&M University
  Non-Presenting Author