Relations among early psychosocial deprivation, error monitoring, and externalizing symptomology

• In Event: 2-176 - Recovery from profound early psychosocial neglect 16 years after placement into institutional care

Integrative Statement

Recent work has suggested that children who experience early psychosocial deprivation have a reduced ability to monitor errors in childhood (Loman et al., 2013; McDermott et al., 2013; Troller-Renfree et al., 2016). Furthermore, reductions in the ability to monitor errors in children who have experienced early adversity have been linked to concurrent externalizing symptomology (McDermott et al., 2013; Troller-Renfree et al., 2016). However, much is still unknown concerning the relations between early psychosocial deprivation, error monitoring, and externalizing symptomology. Of particular interest is elucidating the relations between early psychosocial deprivation and later error monitoring during adolescence – a time of rapid development for the error monitoring system (Davies et al., 2004) – and links to externalizing and ADHD symptomology. We investigated the impact of psychosocial deprivation on behavioral and neural responses (event-related potentials: ERPs) recorded during a Flanker task, focusing on the error-related negativity (ERN) as a measure of error monitoring. Moreover, we assessed the relations between error monitoring and measures of psychopathology for 16-year-old children in the Bucharest Early Intervention Project (BEIP) based on teacher reports of externalizing and ADHD symptoms exhibited by the participant using the MacArthur Health and Behavior Questionnaire. The BEIP involves two groups of institutionalized children randomly assigned in infancy to receive either a high-quality foster care intervention (FCG) or care as usual as provided by the Romanian government (CAUG). Additionally, a non-randomized group of never-institutionalized children (NIG) were recruited from the community for comparison. Results indicate that adolescents in the CAUG, showed perturbed behavioral performance and ERPs on the Flanker task, while adolescents in the FCG no longer showed deficits in behavioral performance and error monitoring when compared to the NIG (see Figure 1). Age of placement into foster care was not related to ERN magnitude. As expected, among children who experienced early psychosocial deprivation (CAUG & FCG), the more time spent in institutional care was associated increased externalizing and ADHD symptoms (r=.285, p=.033). This relation was moderated by the magnitude of the ΔERN, suggesting that children who experience institutional care and exhibited reduced error monitoring were the most at-risk for externalizing and ADHD symptoms. Altogether, these results suggest that early psychosocial deprivation has adverse effects on the error monitoring system in adolescence, but these deficits may be ameliorated though a high-quality foster care intervention. Additionally, the combinatorial effect of psychosocial deprivation and reductions in error monitoring appears to put children at-risk for externalizing and ADHD problems, perhaps suggesting one developmental mechanism for the emergence of behavior problems in previously institutionalized children.

Authors

• Sonya V Troller-Renfree, Teachers College, Columbia University
  Presenting Author

• George A Buzzell, University of Maryland, College Park
  Non-Presenting Author

• Charles Zeanah, Tulane University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Charles A. Nelson, Harvard Medical School
  Non-Presenting Author

• Nathan Fox, University of Maryland
  Non-Presenting Author