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Perinatal and early childhood biomarkers of psychosocial stress and adverse experiences. Pediatr Res 2022; 92:956-965. [PMID: 35091705 DOI: 10.1038/s41390-022-01933-z] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Submit a Manuscript] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/05/2020] [Revised: 11/15/2021] [Accepted: 11/26/2021] [Indexed: 01/23/2023]
Abstract
The human brain develops through a complex interplay of genetic and environmental influences. During critical periods of development, experiences shape brain architecture, often with long-lasting effects. If experiences are adverse, the effects may include the risk of mental and physical disease, whereas positive environments may increase the likelihood of healthy outcomes. Understanding how psychosocial stress and adverse experiences are embedded in biological systems and how we can identify markers of risk may lead to discovering new approaches to improve patient care and outcomes. Biomarkers can be used to identify specific intervention targets and at-risk children early when physiological system malleability increases the likelihood of intervention success. However, identifying reliable biomarkers has been challenging, particularly in the perinatal period and the first years of life, including in preterm infants. This review explores the landscape of psychosocial stress and adverse experience biomarkers. We highlight potential benefits and challenges of identifying risk clinically and different sub-signatures of stress, and in their ability to inform targeted interventions. Finally, we propose that the combination of preterm birth and adversity amplifies the risk for abnormal development and calls for a focus on this group of infants within the field of psychosocial stress and adverse experience biomarkers. IMPACT: Reviews the landscape of biomarkers of psychosocial stress and adverse experiences in the perinatal period and early childhood and highlights the potential benefits and challenges of their clinical utility in identifying risk status in children, and in developing targeted interventions. Explores associations between psychosocial stress and adverse experiences in childhood with prematurity and identifies potential areas of assessment and intervention to improve outcomes in this at-risk group.
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Soares AP, Gutiérrez-Domínguez FJ, Oliveira HM, Lages A, Guerra N, Pereira AR, Tomé D, Lousada M. Explicit Instructions Do Not Enhance Auditory Statistical Learning in Children With Developmental Language Disorder: Evidence From Event-Related Potentials. Front Psychol 2022; 13:905762. [PMID: 35846717 PMCID: PMC9282164 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.905762] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/27/2022] [Accepted: 05/26/2022] [Indexed: 12/04/2022] Open
Abstract
A current issue in psycholinguistic research is whether the language difficulties exhibited by children with developmental language disorder [DLD, previously labeled specific language impairment (SLI)] are due to deficits in their abilities to pick up patterns in the sensory environment, an ability known as statistical learning (SL), and the extent to which explicit learning mechanisms can be used to compensate for those deficits. Studies designed to test the compensatory role of explicit learning mechanisms in children with DLD are, however, scarce, and the few conducted so far have led to inconsistent results. This work aimed to provide new insights into the role that explicit learning mechanisms might play on implicit learning deficits in children with DLD by resorting to a new approach. This approach involved not only the collection of event-related potentials (ERPs), while preschool children with DLD [relative to typical language developmental (TLD) controls] were exposed to a continuous auditory stream made of the repetition of three-syllable nonsense words but, importantly, the collection of ERPs when the same children performed analogous versions of the same auditory SL task first under incidental (implicit) and afterward under intentional (explicit) conditions. In each of these tasks, the level of predictability of the three-syllable nonsense words embedded in the speech streams was also manipulated (high vs. low) to mimic natural languages closely. At the end of both tasks' exposure phase, children performed a two-alternative forced-choice (2-AFC) task from which behavioral evidence of SL was obtained. Results from the 2-AFC tasks failed to show reliable signs of SL in both groups of children. The ERPs data showed, however, significant modulations in the N100 and N400 components, taken as neural signatures of word segmentation in the brain, even though a detailed analysis of the neural responses revealed that only children from the TLD group seem to have taken advantage of the previous knowledge to enhance SL functioning. These results suggest that children with DLD showed deficits both in implicit and explicit learning mechanisms, casting doubts on the efficiency of the interventions relying on explicit instructions to help children with DLD to overcome their language difficulties.
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Affiliation(s)
- Ana Paula Soares
- Human Cognition Lab, CIPsi, School of Psychology, University of Minho, Braga, Portugal
| | | | - Helena M. Oliveira
- Human Cognition Lab, CIPsi, School of Psychology, University of Minho, Braga, Portugal
| | - Alexandrina Lages
- Human Cognition Lab, CIPsi, School of Psychology, University of Minho, Braga, Portugal
| | - Natália Guerra
- Human Cognition Lab, CIPsi, School of Psychology, University of Minho, Braga, Portugal
| | - Ana Rita Pereira
- Psychological Neuroscience Lab, CIPsi, School of Psychology, University of Minho, Braga, Portugal
| | - David Tomé
- Department of Audiology, School of Health, Polytechnic Institute of Porto, Porto, Portugal
- Neurocognition Group, Laboratory of Psychosocial Rehabilitation, CiR, Porto, Portugal
| | - Marisa Lousada
- Center for Health Technology and Services Research (CINTESIS@RISE), School of Health Sciences, University of Aveiro, Aveiro, Portugal
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Soares AP, Gutiérrez-Domínguez FJ, Lages A, Oliveira HM, Vasconcelos M, Jiménez L. Learning Words While Listening to Syllables: Electrophysiological Correlates of Statistical Learning in Children and Adults. Front Hum Neurosci 2022; 16:805723. [PMID: 35280206 PMCID: PMC8905652 DOI: 10.3389/fnhum.2022.805723] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/30/2021] [Accepted: 01/11/2022] [Indexed: 01/29/2023] Open
Abstract
From an early age, exposure to a spoken language has allowed us to implicitly capture the structure underlying the succession of speech sounds in that language and to segment it into meaningful units (words). Statistical learning (SL), the ability to pick up patterns in the sensory environment without intention or reinforcement, is thus assumed to play a central role in the acquisition of the rule-governed aspects of language, including the discovery of word boundaries in the continuous acoustic stream. Although extensive evidence has been gathered from artificial languages experiments showing that children and adults are able to track the regularities embedded in the auditory input, as the probability of one syllable to follow another syllable in the speech stream, the developmental trajectory of this ability remains controversial. In this work, we have collected Event-Related Potentials (ERPs) while 5-year-old children and young adults (university students) were exposed to a speech stream made of the repetition of eight three-syllable nonsense words presenting different levels of predictability (high vs. low) to mimic closely what occurs in natural languages and to get new insights into the changes that the mechanisms underlying auditory statistical learning (aSL) might undergo through the development. The participants performed the aSL task first under implicit and, subsequently, under explicit conditions to further analyze if children take advantage of previous knowledge of the to-be-learned regularities to enhance SL, as observed with the adult participants. These findings would also contribute to extend our knowledge of the mechanisms available to assist SL at each developmental stage. Although behavioral signs of learning, even under explicit conditions, were only observed for the adult participants, ERP data showed evidence of online segmentation in the brain in both groups, as indexed by modulations in the N100 and N400 components. A detailed analysis of the neural data suggests, however, that adults and children rely on different mechanisms to assist the extraction of word-like units from the continuous speech stream, hence supporting the view that SL with auditory linguistic materials changes through development.
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Affiliation(s)
- Ana Paula Soares
- Human Cognition Lab, CIPsi, School of Psychology, University of Minho, Braga, Portugal
- *Correspondence: Ana Paula Soares,
| | | | - Alexandrina Lages
- Human Cognition Lab, CIPsi, School of Psychology, University of Minho, Braga, Portugal
| | - Helena M. Oliveira
- Human Cognition Lab, CIPsi, School of Psychology, University of Minho, Braga, Portugal
| | - Margarida Vasconcelos
- Psychological Neuroscience Lab, CIPsi, School of Psychology, University of Minho, Braga, Portugal
| | - Luis Jiménez
- Department of Psychology, University of Santiago de Compostela, Santiago de Compostela, Spain
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