Contextual Experiences to Adolescents’ Internalizing Problems: The Roles of Neural Responses to Errors and Rewards

Session Type: Paper Symposium

Abstract

Event-related potentials (ERPs), such as rapid neural responses following one’s own errors or affectively salient stimuli such as rewards, may provide a window into understanding individuals’ cognitive and affective processing. This symposium will present three studies examining the role of adolescents’ ERP responses in the relation between contextual experiences (caregiving, peer relations and stress) and subsequent internalizing problems (depression and anxiety). The studies in this symposium focus on two types of ERPs: error-related negativity (ERN) indexing error monitoring and reward positivity indexing reward responsiveness. The first study identifies a developmental pathway from maternal extraversion/sociability to young adults’ social anxiety through error processing in adolescence. Results show that greater maternal extraversion/sociability predicts reduced young adult social anxiety through adolescents’ dampened error processing (reduced ERN followed by reduced post-error slowing) in social relative to non-social contexts. The second study examines whether error monitoring mediates the relation between adolescent girls’ experiences of relational peer victimization and social anxiety. Higher levels of relational peer victimization predict increases in ERN, which in turn relates to heightened social anxiety. The third study examines adolescents’ neural responses to social and monetary rewards as moderators of the relation between chronic stress and depressive symptoms. Neural responses to social rewards moderate this relation, such that chronic stress more strongly relates to depressive symptoms among adolescents showing blunted social reward responsiveness. The discussant will discuss the role of ERPs in the relation between contextual experiences and internalizing problems with a focus on the implications of findings and future directions.

Sub Unit

• Biological Processes: Neuroscience and Genetics

Chair

• Selin Zeytinoglu, University of Maryland - College Park

Discussant

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

Individual Presentations

• From Maternal Personality to Young Adult Social Anxiety Through Children’s Error Processing in Social Contexts - Presenting Author: Selin Zeytinoglu, University of Maryland - College Park; George A Buzzell, Florida International University; Santiago Morales, University of Southern California; Enda Tan, University of Maryland - College Park; Emilio Alejandro Valadez, University of Maryland - College Park; Gia Carusone, University of Maryland; Heather Henderson, University of Waterloo; Daniel S. Pine, National Institutes of Health; Nathan A Fox, University of Maryland - College Park

• Relational Victimization Predicts Adolescents’ Social Anxiety Through Increases in the Error-Related Negativity Across Two Years - Presenting Author: Sally L. Cole, Florida State University; Lushna Mehra, Florida State University; Enrique Cibrian, Florida State University; Elise Cummings, Stony Brook University; Brady Nelson; Greg Hajcak; Alexandria Meyer

• Role of Reward Responsiveness in Pathways from Chronic Stress to Depression in Adolescents - Presenting Author: Samantha Pegg, Vanderbilt University; Zhixin Zhang, Vanderbilt University; Lindsay Dickey, Vanderbilt University; Anh Dao, Vanderbilt University; Kodi B. Arfer, Mount Sinai Health System, , Icahn School of Medicine; Autumn Kujawa, Vanderbilt University