The impact of deprivation and threatening experiences on behavior in early childhood

• In Event: 3-169 - Socioeconomic Status, Brain, and Cognitive Development: Environmental Mechanisms and Individual Differences

Integrative Statement

Early adversity is strongly associated with risk for psychopathology (McLaughlin et al., 2012). Within adversity, deprivation and threat, two dimensions of adversity may lead to psychopathology through different intermediate pathways. Specifically, deprivation, defined as the absence of expected cognitive and social inputs, is associated with lower performance on complex cognitive tasks (Sheridan et al., 2017). Threatening experiences, defined as the presence of atypical traumatic learning experiences, are associated with impaired fear learning processes (McLaughlin et al., 2016). Depriving and threatening experiences have not previously been studied together in early childhood, the time period when experience most profoundly impacts neural development. The present study examines how depriving and threatening experiences are associated with task behavior in early childhood.
Children 4-7 years old (N=63) completed interviews assessing threatening experiences (Violence Exposure Scale for Children-Revised) and deprivation (Multidimensional Neglectful Behavior Scale). Parents completed questionnaires assessing deprivation (Home Screening Questionnaire, Macarthur Scale of Subjective Social Status) and threat (Conflict Tactics Scale 2, Child Abuse Potential Inventory). Children competed a behavioral task assessing cognitive control and a novel block design fear conditioning and extinction paradigm. To operationalize the dimensions of deprivation and threat, an index score was created from each relevant measure. Deprivation and threat were not significantly correlated in this sample. In all analyses, task behavior was predicted by deprivation and threat simultaneously. All analyses additionally controlled for age, gender and IQ.
On the cognitive control task, children performed significantly better on congruent trials than incongruent trials (t = -6.35, p < .001). Children who experienced more deprivation had significantly worse task performance on the cognitive control task (β = 0.14, p < .05, Figure 1). Threatening experiences did not significantly predict cognitive control task performance. In the fear conditioning paradigm, children viewed two shapes (circle/triangle) randomized to be the CS+, a conditioned stimulus paired with an unconditioned stimulus (UCS), or the CS-, a conditioned stimulus never paired with an unconditioned stimulus. On early task trials, the impact of fear learning was observed on the amplitude of the skin conductance response, however, this effect was not related to exposure to threat. Interestingly, across all four blocks of fear acquisition, children who had experienced higher levels of threat experienced showed marginally blunted reactivity (F = 3.52, p =.068, Figure 2). Deprivation was not associated with any aspect of the physiological response during fear learning. Results suggest that deprivation is associated with impaired cognitive control while threatening experiences are marginally associated with blunted reactivity to threatening stimuli. Future work should examine the neural mechanisms underlying these behavioral changes associated with early adversity as well as the degree to which these changes are associated with increased risk for psychopathology.

Authors

• Laura Machlin, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
  Presenting Author

• Adam Miller, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
  Non-Presenting Author

• Jenna Snyder, Cooper Medical School of Rowan University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Katie McLaughlin, Harvard University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Margaret Sheridan, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
  Non-Presenting Author