Is Mothers’ Life Stress Associated with Impaired Executive Functioning and Prefrontal Cortex Activation in Children?

• In Event: Poster Session 08
  In Poster Session: PS 08 Topic - Attention, Learning, Memory

Abstract

Mother’s exposure to life stress may have adverse effects on the functioning of their children. Executive function (EF) involves mental processes, such as cognitive flexibility and inhibitory control, that enable goal-directed behavior and self-regulation (Hendry et al., 2016). These processes are rooted in prefrontal cortex (PFC) functioning (Logue & Gould, 2014). Although previous research has examined the associations of mothers’ life stress with children’s socioemotional functioning, few studies have considered the role of maternal stress in young children’s EF and PFC activation. In this study, we test the association of mothers’ lifetime exposure to stressful events with preschool-age children’s performance on, and neural responses to, inhibitory control and cognitive flexibility tasks. We hypothesize that the children of women exposed to more stressful events will demonstrate poorer behavioral performance and decreased PFC activation during EF tasks.

Thirty-five mothers and their preschool-age children (mean age=4.37± 0.99 years; 20 male; 18 White, 9 multi-racial, 4 Asian, 4 Other) participated in this study. Mothers reported their exposure to 41 stressful life events on the self-administered Parent–Child Stress Interview (King, 2019) and we calculated the number of types of stressors endorsed. Children completed computer-based tasks, including the Go/No-go task, testing inhibitory control, and the Stroop task, testing cognitive flexibility (Fishburn et al., 2019; Li et al., 2017). To operationalize EF performance, we calculated the difference in correct responses between experimental and control trials for each task. We assessed children’s brain activity during the EF tasks using functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS). The fNIRS data have not yet been processed and analyzed. Before the SRCD meeting, we will contrast oxygenated hemoglobin levels during the experimental and control conditions of each EF task to (1) identify brain regions associated with inhibitory control and cognitive flexibility; and (2) to test correlations among brain activity, maternal life stress and EF performance.

Thus far, supporting our hypothesis, our results indicate that the children of mothers exposed to more stressful life events have poorer behavioral performance on the Go/No-go task (r=-0.64, p< .0001; Figure 1), an association that was not accounted for by child age, child sex, maternal education or annual household income. Contrary to our hypothesis, however the positive association between maternal exposure to stress and children’s performance on the Stroop task was not statistically significant (r=0.27, p=0.116; Figure 2).

Our findings suggest that women’s exposure to stressful life events may differentially affect their children’s EF functioning. Specifically, the children of women exposed to more stressful life events exhibit poorer inhibitory control. Conversely, maternal life stress was not significantly associated with children’s cognitive flexibility although the correlation was positive. Maternal lifetime stress may differentially confer risks for various facets of children’s executive functioning. Larger studies with greater statistical power are necessary to replicate our significant and null findings. Our next steps, which will be completed before SRCD, include preprocessing and analyzing children’s fNIRS data to examine whether the associations between maternal life stress and child EF performance extend to the neural level.

Group Authors

N/A

Authors

• Mahnoor Hyat, Stanford University
  Presenting Author

• Jonas G. Miller, Stanford University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Lucy Sobey King, Stanford University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Daisy Elise Feddoes, Stanford University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Jillian R Segarra, Stanford University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Ian Gotlib, Stanford University
  Non-Presenting Author