SES Moderates the Influence of Biological and Environmental Pathways of Anxiety Risk in Early Childhood

• In Event: Poster Session 10
  In Poster Session: PS 10 Topic - Family Context & Processes

Abstract

Anxiety is one of the most commonly occurring childhood psychological disorders; 7.4% of U.S. children between ages 3-17 have a diagnosed anxiety disorder (CDC, 2020). Even at nonclinical levels, early anxious behaviors in children can manifest as a host of social and academic problems (Buss et al., 2013) and have the potential to shape the course of developmental trajectories (Bittner et al., 2007). Several studies have linked harsh parenting and error-related negativity (ERN), a neural marker of self-monitoring, to heightened risk for anxiety problems in early development (Ladouceur et al., 2006; Wiggins et al., 2015) indicating putatively environmental and biological pathways that co-occur to predict childhood risk. Relatively recent work suggests that extent of biological and environmental influences on child outcomes may be moderated by socioeconomic factors (SES; Tucker-Drob et al., 2010), with biological influences being more readily apparent at high SES and environmental influences being paramount at low SES. Consistent with this, the developmental course of the ERN is modulated by SES (Brooker, 2018). However, no study to date has simultaneously investigated the moderation of these two pathways by SES across early childhood.
We used an existing longitudinal dataset to test the degree to which SES simultaneously moderated a biological pathway (ERN) and an environmental pathway (parenting) between ages 3 and 5 (N = 121). At child ages 3 and 4, parents reported family SES (Hollingshead, 1975) and ERN were derived from EEG recordings during a modified go/no-go task. Parenting behaviors were coded from observations during a 5-minute structured clean-up task at ages 3 and 4 resulting in authoritarian and authoritative parenting composites at each age. Anxiety risk at age 5 was quantified through two composites (anxious behaviors and social problems) derived from the MacArthur Health and Behavior Questionnaire Parent Version (HBQ-P; Armstrong & Goldstein, 2003) and The Anxiety Disorders Interview Schedule Parent Version (ADIS-P; Silverman & Albano, 1996). We found that SES moderated the pathways of ERN and authoritative parenting to child outcomes. At high SES, greater ERN at age 4 predicted more anxious behaviors (B = -1.874, SE(B) = 0.873, p = 0.032, 95%CI [-3.577, -0.155]) while smaller ERN at age 4 was associated with more social problems at age 5 (B = 2.016, SE(B) = 1.007, p = 0.045, 95%CI [0.071, 4.006]). Greater authoritative parenting also predicted more social problems (B = 2.250, SE(B) = 0.785, p = 0.004, 95%CI [0.712, 3.788]) at age 5. However, at low SES, smaller ERN amplitudes at age 4 predicted more social problems at age 5 (B = 0.608, SE(B) = 0.294, p = 0.038, 95%CI [0.032, 1.183]). Moreover, low SES did not moderate the pathway from parenting behaviors to child outcomes. Our findings suggest that biologically-mediated pathways of anxiety risk may be more robustly associated with early-childhood outcomes at higher SES. Such findings expand basic science knowledge about the pathways of childhood anxiety that may be used for prevention and early intervention efforts.

Group Authors

Sejal Mistry, Dr. Rebecca J. Brooker

Authors

• Sejal Mistry-Patel, Texas A&M University - College Station
  Presenting Author

• Rebecca J Brooker, Texas A&M University - College Station
  Non-Presenting Author