Decision-making deficits among maltreated children

Blunted sensitivity to expected value during risky decision making in individuals with problematic pornography use

Background and aims

Neurobiological models of addiction posit that addiction manifests through an amplified salience towards addiction-associated stimuli and a diminished responsiveness to non-addiction-related incentives. However, existing research on reward processing in individuals with problematic pornography use (PPU) has primarily been limited to sexual cue reactivity.

Methods

In this event-related potential (ERP) study, we employed a risky decision-making task involving 30 individuals with PPU and 33 healthy controls (HCs) to examine the effects of PPU on non-pornographic (money) reward valuation.

Results

Compared to HCs, individuals with PPU exhibited compromised sensitivity to monetary rewards. Specifically, while the HC group demonstrated a differential response in late positive potential (LPP) amplitude to various expected value (EV) levels, this pattern was absent in the PPU group. This impairment was associated with poorer adaptive decision-making, as evidenced by PPU participants' inability to adjust risk choices based on changes in EV, leading to a propensity for riskier decisions in disadvantageous situations.

Discussion and conclusions

The findings of impaired monetary evaluation in individuals with PPU may potentially explain why they continually pursue pornographic rewards while showing insensitivity to other rewards in daily life. Consequently, treatment development strategies may prioritize improving sensitivity to non-pornographic rewards within this population.

Age, β-endorphin, and sex dependent effects of maternal separation on locomotor activity, anxiety-like behavior, and alcohol reward

Introduction

Childhood adversity is pervasive and linked to numerous disadvantages in adulthood, including physical health problems, mental illness, and substance use disorders. Initial sensitivity to the rewarding effects of alcohol predicts the risk of developing an alcohol use disorder, and may be linked to developmental stress. The opioid peptide β-endorphin (β-E) regulates the stress response and is also implicated in the risk for excessive alcohol consumption.

Methods

We explored the influence of β-E in an animal model of early life adversity using controlled maternal separation by evaluating changes in locomotor activity, anxiety-like behavior, and the initial rewarding effects of alcohol in a single exposure conditioned place preference paradigm in control C57BL/6J and β-E deficient β-E +/+ 0.129S2-Pomc tm1Low/J; β-E −/− mice. Maternal separation (MS) occurred for 3 h each day from post-natal days (PND) 5–18 in approximately half the subjects.

Results

Maternal interactions increased following the separation protocol equally in both genotypes. MS and control subjects were tested as adolescents (PND 26–32) or adults (PND 58–72); the effects of MS were generally more pronounced in older subjects. Adults were more active than adolescents in the open field, and MS decreased activity in adolescent mice but increased it in adults. The increase in adult activity as a result of early life stress depended on both β-E and sex. β-E also influenced the effect of maternal separation on anxiety-like behavior in the Elevated Plus Maze. MS promoted rewarding effects of alcohol in male β-E deficient mice of either age, but had no effect in other groups.

Discussion

Taken together, these results suggest that the effects of MS develop over time and are β-E and sex dependent and may aid understanding of how individual differences influence the impact of adverse childhood experiences.

Developmental pathways from child maltreatment to adolescent pregnancy: A multiple mediational model

Adolescent pregnancy (AP) is a significant public health issue. Child maltreatment (CM) represents an established risk factor, yet little is known about the explanatory mechanisms linking the phenomena. Informed by developmental theory, this study prospectively tested seven multi-level, indirect pathways that could plausibly explain the relationship between CM and AP: (1) substance use (polysubstance use and frequency); (2) sexual risk behavior; (3) depressive symptoms; (4) posttraumatic stress disorder symptoms; (5) cognitive dysregulation; (6) pregnancy desire and difficulty expectancies; and (7) age at menarche. Data came from a prospective, longitudinal cohort study of 469 ethnically diverse, nulliparous adolescent females, designed to examine the impact of substantiated CM on reproductive outcomes such as pregnancy and childbirth (265 maltreated and 204 demographically matched comparison adolescents). A multiple-mediator structural equation model was conducted to simultaneously test multiple indirect effects while accounting for confounding variables. Maltreatment had an indirect effect on pregnancy via substance use and higher pregnancy desire/lower perceived difficulty. Findings represent a step towards elucidating pathways linking CM with AP. Recommendations are offered to prevent pregnancy by addressing the pregnancy-specific mechanisms that are part of the maltreatment sequelae.

Biological sensitivity to context as a dyadic construct: An investigation of child-parent RSA synchrony among low-SES youth

Parenting behaviors are significantly linked to youths' behavioral adjustment, an association that is moderated by youths' and parents' self-regulation. The biological sensitivity to context theory suggests that respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) indexes youths' varying susceptibility to rearing contexts. However, self-regulation in the family context is increasingly viewed as a process of "coregulation" that is biologically embedded and involves dynamic Parent×Child interactions. No research thus far has examined physiological synchrony as a dyadic biological context that may moderate associations between parenting behaviors and preadolescent adjustment. Using a two-wave sample of 101 low-socioeconomic status (SES) families (children and caretakers; mean age 10.28 years), we employed multilevel modeling to examine dyadic coregulation during a conflict task, indicated by RSA synchrony, as a moderator of the linkages between observed parenting behaviors and preadolescents' internalizing and externalizing problems. Results showed that high dyadic RSA synchrony resulted in a multiplicative association between parenting and youth adjustment. High dyadic synchrony intensified the relations between parenting behaviors and youth behavior problems, such that in the context of high dyadic synchrony, positive and negative parenting behaviors were associated with decreased and increased behavioral problems, respectively. Parent-child dyadic RSA synchrony is discussed as a potential biomarker of biological sensitivity in youth.

Linking Mild Childhood Adversity with Conflict and False Feedback Monitoring

It was proposed that dimensions of childhood adversity (i.e., deprivation and threat) have distinct effects on neural development and function. Present study examined the relationships between mild deprivation/threat and performance monitoring among undergraduate students without psychiatric diagnoses. By using event-related potentials (ERPs), 78 participants underwent a modified Flanker task in which false feedback on approximately 10% of the correct response trials was administered. The dynamic stages of performance monitoring in this task were differentiated into interference monitoring, feedback processing, and behavior adjustment. Childhood adversity was assessed by a Childhood Trauma Questionnaire (CTQ), which was further divided into subscales of neglect (as a proxy for deprivation dimension) and abuse (as a proxy for threat dimension). Our results showed that higher score of childhood neglect was associated with more interference cost indicated by longer RT to interference trials at the behavioral level, and altered interference monitoring indicated by smaller N2 amplitude to interference trials at the neural level. Meanwhile, higher score of childhood abuse was related to smaller P3 amplitude to unexpected negative feedback. These results suggested that mild childhood deprivation might be associated with altered processing of interference monitoring, while mild childhood threat might be linked to lower electrophysiological response to unexpected negative feedback among young adults without psychiatric disorders.

Flexibility in valenced reinforcement learning computations across development

Optimal integration of positive and negative outcomes during learning varies depending on an environment's reward statistics. The present study investigated the extent to which children, adolescents, and adults (N = 142 8-25 year-olds, 55% female, 42% White, 31% Asian, 17% mixed race, and 8% Black; data collected in 2021) adapt their weighting of better-than-expected and worse-than-expected outcomes when learning from reinforcement. Participants made choices across two contexts: one in which weighting positive outcomes more heavily than negative outcomes led to better performance, and one in which the reverse was true. Reinforcement learning modeling revealed that across age, participants shifted their valence biases in accordance with environmental structure. Exploratory analyses revealed strengthening of context-dependent flexibility with increasing age.

Accumbofrontal tract integrity is related to early life adversity and feedback learning

Abuse, neglect, exposure to violence, and other forms of early life adversity (ELA) are incredibly common and significantly impact physical and mental development. While important progress has been made in understanding the impacts of ELA on behavior and the brain, the preponderance of past work has primarily centered on threat processing and vigilance while ignoring other potentially critical neurobehavioral processes, such as reward-responsiveness and learning. To advance our understanding of potential mechanisms linking ELA and poor mental health, we center in on structural connectivity of the corticostriatal circuit, specifically accumbofrontal white matter tracts. Here, in a sample of 77 youth (Mean age = 181 months), we leveraged rigorous measures of ELA, strong diffusion neuroimaging methodology, and computational modeling of reward learning. Linking these different forms of data, we hypothesized that higher ELA would be related to lower quantitative anisotropy in accumbofrontal white matter. Furthermore, we predicted that lower accumbofrontal quantitative anisotropy would be related to differences in reward learning. Our primary predictions were confirmed, but similar patterns were not seen in control white matter tracts outside of the corticostriatal circuit. Examined collectively, our work is one of the first projects to connect ELA to neural and behavioral alterations in reward-learning, a critical potential mechanism linking adversity to later developmental challenges. This could potentially provide windows of opportunity to address the effects of ELA through interventions and preventative programming.

Impact of Early Life Stress on Reward Circuit Function and Regulation

Early life stress - including experience of child maltreatment, neglect, separation from or loss of a parent, and other forms of adversity - increases lifetime risk of mood, anxiety, and substance use disorders. A major component of this risk may be early life stress-induced alterations in motivation and reward processing, mediated by changes in the nucleus accumbens (NAc) and ventral tegmental area (VTA). Here, we review evidence of the impact of early life stress on reward circuit structure and function from human and animal models, with a focus on the NAc. We then connect these results to emerging theoretical models about the indirect and direct impacts of early life stress on reward circuit development. Through this review and synthesis, we aim to highlight open research questions and suggest avenues of future study in service of basic science, as well as applied insights. Understanding how early life stress alters reward circuit development, function, and motivated behaviors is a critical first step toward developing the ability to predict, prevent, and treat stress-related psychopathology spanning mood, anxiety, and substance use disorders.

Lower neural value signaling in the prefrontal cortex is related to childhood family income and depressive symptomatology during adolescence

Lower family income during childhood is related to increased rates of adolescent depression, though the underlying mechanisms are poorly understood. Evidence suggests that individuals with depression demonstrate hypoactivation in brain regions involved in reward learning and decision-making processes (e.g., portions of the prefrontal cortex). Separately, lower family income has been associated with neural alterations in similar regions. Motivated by this research, we examined associations between family income, depression, and brain activity during a reward learning and decision-making fMRI task in a sample of adolescents (full n = 94; usable n = 78; mean age = 15.2 years). We focused on brain activity for: 1) expected value (EV), the learned subjective value of an object, and 2) prediction error, the difference between EV and the actual outcome received. Regions of interest related to reward learning were examined in connection to childhood family income and parent-reported adolescent depressive symptoms. As hypothesized, lower activity in the subgenual anterior cingulate (sACC) for EV in response to approach stimuli was associated with lower childhood family income, as well as greater symptoms of depression measured one-year after the neuroimaging session. These results are consistent with the hypothesis that lower early family income leads to disruptions in reward and decision-making brain circuitry, contributing to adolescent depression.

Childhood attention problems mediate effects of child maltreatment on decision-making performance in emerging adulthood

Decision-making impairments during emerging adulthood confer risk for challenges in social and occupational roles and may increase the odds of developing health problems. Childhood maltreatment is related to maladaptation in cognitive and affective domains (e.g., executive functioning, emotion regulation) implicated in the development of decision-making capacities. This study investigates childhood maltreatment and subsequent childhood attention problems as developmental antecedents of decision making performance in emerging adulthood. At Wave 1, equal numbers of maltreated and non-maltreated children (Mage = 11.28, SD = .97; 51.5% female; mean family income: $22,530/year) were recruited to take part in a research summer camp. The current study includes a subset of participants (n = 379) from Wave 1 who completed the Cambridge Gambling Task (CGT) at Wave 2 (Mage = 19.68, SD = 1.12; 77.3% Black/African American, 11.1% White, 7.7% Hispanic, 4.0% Other race). The CGT measured decision-making performance by assessing betting behavior across trials that differed in probability of winning. ANOVA results showed that emerging adults who experienced maltreatment in childhood placed higher bets and less sensitively adjusted bets across trials varying in level of risk. Longitudinal structural equation modeling results indicated significant relationships between number of maltreatment subtypes and greater childhood inattention, controlling for IQ. In turn, greater attention problems in childhood predicted worse risk adjustment, or ability to modify betting based on the probability of winning on CGT trials. This mediated path shows one process by which maltreatment negatively affects decision making and risk taking processes in emerging adulthood. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

The impact of child abuse on the neurobiology of self-processing in depressed adolescents

Child abuse is linked to lifetime psychopathology including abnormal self-processing. Given self-processing maturation in adolescence, we tested duration, presence, and abuse accumulation's impact upon self-processing neurobiology among depressed youth with (N = 54) and without an abuse history (N = 40). Youth evaluated positive and negative self-descriptors across four points of view in the scanner. Regression analyses showed that longer abuse duration (in days) was associated with lower activity in inferior temporal (e.g. insula, fusiform & parahippocampus), striatal, cerebellar and midbrain structures when processing negative self-descriptors with the least activity in youth exposed to 6+ abuse years. Abuse presence vs. absence was linked to higher neural activity. However, youth exposed to a single abuse instance to 3 years of abuse might drive that relative neural hyperactivity. Results support: 1) the toxic stress model of blunted overall neuro-reactivity underpinning emotion, sensorimotor gating, and social cognition during negative stimuli as an adaptation to pervasively toxic environments and 2) the differential impact of acute versus chronic stress upon neurophysiological indices. Finally, child abuse duration might impact these ancillary and higher socioemotional processes differently among depressed youth primarily for negative but not positive self-processing.

Functional Alterations and Cerebral Variations in Humans Exposed to Early Life Stress

Early life stress can be caused by acute or chronic exposure to childhood events, such as emotional, physical, sexual abuse, and neglect. Early stress is associated with subsequent alterations in physical and mental health, which can extend into adolescence, adulthood, and even old age. The effects of early stress exposure include alterations in cognitive, neuropsychological, and behavioral functions, and can even lead to the development of psychiatric disorders and changes in brain anatomy. The present manuscript provides a review of the main findings on these effects reported in the scientific literature in recent decades. Early life stress is associated with the presence of psychiatric disorders, mainly mood disorders such as depression and risk of suicide, as well as with the presence of post-traumatic stress disorder. At the neuropsychological level, the involvement of different mental processes such as executive functions, abstract reasoning, certain memory modalities, and poor school-skill performance has been reported. In addition, we identified reports of alterations of different subdomains of each of these processes. Regarding neuroanatomical effects, the involvement of cortical regions, subcortical nuclei, and the subcortical white matter has been documented. Among the telencephalic regions most affected and studied are the prefrontal cortex, the hippocampus, the amygdala, and the anterior cingulate cortex. Understanding the impact of early life stress on postnatal brain development is very important for the orientation of therapeutic intervention programs and could help in the formulation and implementation of preventive measures as well as in the reorientation of research targets.

Characterizing the impact of adversity, abuse, and neglect on adolescent amygdala resting-state functional connectivity

Characterizing typologies of childhood adversity may inform the development of risk profiles and corresponding interventions aimed at mitigating its lifelong consequences. A neurobiological grounding of these typologies requires systematic comparisons of neural structure and function among individuals with different exposure histories. Using seed-to-whole brain analyses, this study examined associations between childhood adversity and amygdala resting-state functional connectivity (rs-fc) in adolescents aged 11–19 years across three independent studies (N = 223; 127 adversity group) in both general and dimensional models of adversity (comparing abuse and neglect). In a general model, adversity was associated with altered amygdala rs-fc with clusters within the left anterior lateral prefrontal cortex. In a dimensional model, abuse was associated with altered amygdala rs-fc within the orbitofrontal cortex, dorsal precuneus, posterior cingulate cortex, and dorsal anterior cingulate cortex/anterior mid-cingulate cortex, as well as within the dorsal attention, visual, and somatomotor networks. Neglect was associated with altered amygdala rs-fc with the hippocampus, supplementary motor cortex, temporoparietal junction, and regions within the dorsal attention network. Both general and dimensional models revealed unique regions, potentially reflecting pathways by which distinct histories of adversity may influence adolescent behavior, cognition, and psychopathology.

Altered white matter connectivity in young people exposed to childhood abuse: a tract-based spatial statistics (TBSS) and tractography study

BACKGROUND

Childhood abuse is associated with structural brain abnormalities. Few studies have investigated white matter tract abnormalities in medication-naive, drug-free individuals who experienced childhood abuse. We examined the association between childhood abuse and abnormalities in white matter tracts in that population, controlling for psychiatric comorbidities.

METHODS

We collected diffusion tensor imaging data for age- and sex-matched youth with childhood abuse, psychiatric controls (matched for psychiatric diagnoses) and healthy controls. Tract-specific analysis was conducted using tractography. Tract-based spatial statistics (TBSS) was used to assess group differences in fractional anisotropy (FA) at the whole-brain level.

RESULTS

We included 20 youth who experienced childhood abuse, 18 psychiatric controls and 25 healthy controls in our analysis. Tractography analysis showed abuse-specific reduced tract volume in the inferior longitudinal fasciculus (ILF) and inferior frontal-occipital fasciculus (IFoF) in the abuse group relative to both healthy and psychiatric controls. Furthermore, abnormalities in the left IFoF were associated with greater abuse severity. The TBSS analysis showed significantly reduced FA in a left-hemispheric cluster comprising the ILF, IFoF and corpus callosum splenium in the abuse group relative to healthy and psychiatric controls.

LIMITATIONS

It is unclear to what extent pubertal development, malnutrition and prenatal drug exposure may have influenced the findings.

CONCLUSION

Childhood abuse is associated with altered structure of neural pathways connecting the frontal, temporal and occipital cortices that are known to mediate affect and cognitive control. The abuse-specific deficits in the ILF and IFoF suggest that fibre tracts presumably involved in conveying and processing the adverse abusive experience are specifically compromised in this population.

Risk taking, decision-making, and brain volume in youth adopted internationally from institutional care

Early life stress in the form of early institutional care has been shown to have wide-ranging impacts on the biological and behavioral development of young children. Studies of brain structure using magnetic resonance imaging have reported decreased prefrontal volumes, and a large literature has detailed decreased executive function (EF) in post-institutionalized (PI) youth. Little is known about how these findings relate to decision-making, particularly in PI youth entering adolescence-a period often characterized by social transition and increased reliance upon EF skills and the still-maturing prefrontal regions that support them. As decision-making in risky situations can be an especially important milestone in early adolescence, a clearer knowledge of the relationship between risky decision making and prefrontal structures in post-institutionalized youth is needed. The youth version of the Balloon Analogue Risk Task and a two-deck variant of the Iowa Gambling Task were used to assess risky decision-making in post-institutionalized youth and a community control group (N = 74, PI = 44, Non-adopted = 30; mean age = 12.93). Participants also completed a structural MRI scan for the assessment of group differences in brain structure. We hypothesized that participants adopted from institutions would display poorer performance on risky-decision making tasks and smaller brain volumes compared to non-adopted youth. Results indicated that later-adopted participants made fewer risky decisions than those experiencing shorter periods of deprivation or no institutional rearing. Further, decreased prefrontal volumes were observed in later-adopted youth and were significantly associated with task performance. Our results suggest that changes in risky-decision making behavior and brain structure are associated with the duration of early institutional care.

Early life stress, FK506 binding protein 5 gene (FKBP5) methylation, and inhibition-related prefrontal function: A prospective longitudinal study

Individuals who have experienced high levels of childhood stress are at increased risk for a wide range of behavioral problems that persist into adulthood, yet the neurobiological and molecular mechanisms underlying these associations remain poorly understood. Many of the difficulties observed in stress-exposed children involve problems with learning and inhibitory control. This experiment was designed to test individuals' ability to learn to inhibit responding during a laboratory task. To do so, we measured stress exposure among a community sample of school-aged children, and then followed these children for a decade. Those from the highest and lowest quintiles of childhood stress exposure were invited to return to our laboratory as young adults. At that time, we reassessed their life stress exposure, acquired functional magnetic resonance imaging data during an inhibitory control task, and assayed these individuals' levels of methylation in the FK506 binding protein 5 (FKBP5) gene. We found that individuals who experienced high levels of stress in childhood showed less differentiation in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex between error and correct trials during inhibition. This effect was associated only with childhood stress exposure and not by current levels of stress in adulthood. In addition, FKBP5 methylation mediated the association between early life stress and inhibition-related prefrontal activity. These findings are discussed in terms of using multiple levels of analyses to understand the ways in which adversity in early development may affect adult behavioral adaptation.

Grey matter volume and thickness abnormalities in young people with a history of childhood abuse

BACKGROUND

Childhood abuse is associated with abnormalities in brain structure and function. Few studies have investigated abuse-related brain abnormalities in medication-naïve, drug-free youth that also controlled for psychiatric comorbidities by inclusion of a psychiatric control group, which is crucial to disentangle the effects of abuse from those associated with the psychiatric conditions.

METHODS

Cortical volume (CV), cortical thickness (CT) and surface area (SA) were measured in 22 age- and gender-matched medication-naïve youth (aged 13-20) exposed to childhood abuse, 19 psychiatric controls matched for psychiatric diagnoses and 27 healthy controls. Both region-of-interest (ROI) and whole-brain analyses were conducted.

RESULTS

For the ROI analysis, the childhood abuse group compared with healthy controls only, had significantly reduced CV in bilateral cerebellum and reduced CT in left insula and right lateral orbitofrontal cortex (OFC). At the whole-brain level, relative to healthy controls, the childhood abuse group showed significantly reduced CV in left lingual, pericalcarine, precuneus and superior parietal gyri, and reduced CT in left pre-/postcentral and paracentral regions, which furthermore correlated with greater abuse severity. They also had increased CV in left inferior and middle temporal gyri relative to healthy controls. Abnormalities in the precuneus, temporal and precentral regions were abuse-specific relative to psychiatric controls, albeit at a more lenient level. Groups did not differ in SA.

CONCLUSIONS

Childhood abuse is associated with widespread structural abnormalities in OFC-insular, cerebellar, occipital, parietal and temporal regions, which likely underlie the abnormal affective, motivational and cognitive functions typically observed in this population.

Instrumental learning and cognitive flexibility processes are impaired in children exposed to early life stress

Children who experience severe early life stress show persistent deficits in many aspects of cognitive and social adaptation. Early stress might be associated with these broad changes in functioning because it impairs general learning mechanisms. To explore this possibility, we examined whether individuals who experienced abusive caregiving in childhood had difficulties with instrumental learning and/or cognitive flexibility as adolescents. Fifty-three 14-17-year-old adolescents (31 exposed to high levels of childhood stress, 22 control) completed an fMRI task that required them to first learn associations in the environment and then update those pairings. Adolescents with histories of early life stress eventually learned to pair stimuli with both positive and negative outcomes, but did so more slowly than their peers. Furthermore, these stress-exposed adolescents showed markedly impaired cognitive flexibility; they were less able than their peers to update those pairings when the contingencies changed. These learning problems were reflected in abnormal activity in learning- and attention-related brain circuitry. Both altered patterns of learning and neural activation were associated with the severity of lifetime stress that the adolescents had experienced. Taken together, the results of this experiment suggest that basic learning processes are impaired in adolescents exposed to early life stress. These general learning mechanisms may help explain the emergence of social problems observed in these individuals.

Children's Sensitivity to Cost and Reward in Decision Making Across Distinct Domains of Probability, Effort, and Delay

Many behavioral paradigms used to study individuals' decision making tendencies do not capture the decision components that contribute to behavioral outcomes, such as differentiating decisions driven toward a reward from decisions driven away from a cost. This study tested a novel decision making task in a sample of 403 children (age 9 years) enrolled in an ongoing longitudinal study. The task consisted of 3 blocks representing distinct cost domains (delay, probability, effort) wherein children were presented with a deck of cards, each of which consisted of a reward and a cost. Children elected whether to accept or skip the card at each trial. Reward-cost pairs were selected using an adaptive algorithm to strategically sample the decision space in the fewest number of trials. Using person-specific regression models, decision preferences were quantified for each cost domain with respect to general tolerance (intercept), as well as parameters estimating the effect of incremental increases in reward or cost on the probability of accepting a card. Results support the relative independence of decision making tendencies across cost domains, with moderate correlations observed between tolerance for delay and effort. Specific decision parameters showed unique associations with cognitive and behavioral measures including executive function, academic motivation, anxiety, and hyperactivity. Evidence indicates that sensitivity to reward is an important factor in incentivizing decisions to work harder or wait longer. Dissociating the relative contributions of reward and cost sensitivity in multiple domains may facilitate the identification of heterogeneity in sub-optimal decision making.

Early adversity and learning: implications for typical and atypical behavioral development

BACKGROUND

Children who experience early adversity often develop emotion regulatory problems, but little is known about the mechanisms that mediate this relation. We tested whether general associative learning processes contribute to associations between adversity, in the form of child maltreatment, and negative behavioral outcomes.

METHODS

Eighty-one participants between 12 and 17 years of age were recruited for this study and completed a probabilistic learning Task. Forty-one of these participants had been exposed to physical abuse, a form of early adversity. Forty additional participants without any known history of maltreatment served as a comparison group. All participants (and their parents) also completed portions of the Youth Life Stress Interview to understand adolescent's behavior. We calculated measures of associative learning, and also constructed mathematical models of learning.

RESULTS

We found that adolescents exposed to high levels of adversity early in their lives had lower levels of associative learning than comparison adolescents. In addition, we found that impaired associative learning partially explained the higher levels of behavioral problems among youth who suffered early adversity. Using mathematical models, we also found that two components of learning were specifically affected in children exposed to adversity: choice variability and biases in their beliefs about the likelihood of rewards in the environment.

CONCLUSIONS

Participants who had been exposed to early adversity were less able than their peers to correctly learn which stimuli were likely to result in reward, even after repeated feedback. These individuals also used information about known rewards in their environments less often. In addition, individuals exposed to adversity made decisions early in the learning process as if rewards were less consistent and occurred more at random. These data suggest one mechanism through which early life experience shapes behavioral development.

Out of harm's way: Secure versus insecure–disorganized attachment predicts less adolescent risk taking related to childhood poverty

Although some risk taking in adolescence is normative, evidence suggests that adolescents raised in conditions of socioeconomic disadvantage are disproportionately burdened with risk taking and its negative consequences. Using longitudinal data from the NICHD Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development, we investigated quality of the early caregiving environment as a potential prospective buffer against the long-term association between childhood poverty and adolescent risk taking. Multicategorical moderation model results indicated that if raised in poverty across age 1–54 months (average family income to needs ratio ≤ 1.02), relative to affluence (income to needs ratio ≥ 6.16), adolescents with histories of secure attachment to caregivers exhibited two times the number of risk behaviors at age 15, whereas adolescents with insecure–disorganized histories exhibited nearly five times the number of risk behaviors. Both early family economic hardship and history of insecure–disorganized attachment remained significant predictors of increased adolescent risk taking, alongside the interactive effect. Probing the interaction's region of significance revealed that history of secure (vs. insecure–disorganized) attachment is associated with protective reductions in risk taking below a family income to needs ratio of 2.24, or about 220% poverty level. Findings support a diathesis–stress model in which children with secure attachment histories are less deleteriously impacted by early socioeconomic adversity than their insecure–disorganized peers.

Ventral striatal activity links adversity and reward processing in children

Adversity impacts many aspects of psychological and physical development including reward-based learning and decision-making. Mechanisms relating adversity and reward processing in children, however, remain unclear. Here, we show that adversity is associated with potentiated learning from positive outcomes and impulsive decision-making, but unrelated to learning from negative outcomes. We then show via functional magnetic resonance imaging that the link between adversity and reward processing is partially mediated by differences in ventral striatal response to rewards. The findings suggest that early-life adversity is associated with alterations in the brain's sensitivity to rewards accounting, in part, for the link between adversity and altered reward processing in children.

Multilevel developmental approaches to understanding the effects of child maltreatment: Recent advances and future challenges

Recent research in the field of child maltreatment has begun to shed new light on the emergence of health problems in children by emphasizing the responsiveness of developmental processes to children's environmental and biological contexts. Here, I highlight recent trends in the field with an emphasis on the effects of early life stress across multiple levels of developmental domains.

Plasticity of risky decision making among maltreated adolescents: Evidence from a randomized controlled trial

Childhood maltreatment has lasting negative effects throughout the life span. Early intervention research has demonstrated that these effects can be remediated through skill-based, family-centered interventions. However, less is known about plasticity during adolescence, and whether interventions are effective many years after children experience maltreatment. This study investigated this question by examining adolescent girls' ability to make advantageous decisions in the face of risk using a validated decision-making task; performance on this task has been associated with key neural regions involved in affective processing and executive functioning. Maltreated foster girls (n = 92), randomly assigned at age 11 to either an intervention designed to prevent risk-taking behaviors or services as usual (SAU), and nonmaltreated age and socioeconomic status matched girls living with their biological parent(s) (n = 80) completed a decision-making task (at age 15-17) that assessed risk taking and sensitivity to expected value, an index of advantageous decision making. Girls in the SAU condition demonstrated the greatest decision-making difficulties, primarily for risks to avoid losses. In the SAU group, frequency of neglect was related to greater difficulties in this area. Girls in the intervention condition with less neglect performed similarly to nonmaltreated peers. This research suggests that early maltreatment may impact decision-making abilities into adolescence and that enriched environments during early adolescence provide a window of plasticity that may ameliorate these negative effects.

Greater decision-making competence is associated with greater expected-value sensitivity, but not overall risk taking: an examination of concurrent validity

Decision-making competence reflects individual differences in the susceptibility to committing decision-making errors, measured using tasks common from behavioral decision research (e.g., framing effects, under/overconfidence, following decision rules). Prior research demonstrates that those with higher decision-making competence report lower incidence of health-risking and antisocial behaviors, but there has been less focus on intermediate processes that may impact real-world decisions, and, in particular, those implicated by normative models. Here we test the associations between measures of youth decision-making competence (Y-DMC) and one such process, the degree to which individuals make choices consistent with maximizing expected value (EV). Using a task involving hypothetical gambles, we find that greater EV sensitivity is associated with greater Y-DMC. Higher Y-DMC scores are associated with (a) choosing risky options when EV favors those options and (b) avoiding risky options when EV favors a certain option. This relationship is stronger for gambles that involved potential losses. The results suggest that Y-DMC captures decision processes consistent with standard normative evaluations of risky decisions.

Decision-making for risky gains and losses among college students with Internet gaming disorder

Individuals with Internet gaming disorder (IGD) tend to exhibit disadvantageous risky decision-making not only in their real life but also in laboratory tasks. Decision-making is a complex multifaceted function and different cognitive processes are involved in decision-making for gains and losses. However, the relationship between impaired decision-making and gain versus loss processing in the context of IGD is poorly understood. The main aim of the present study was to separately evaluate decision-making for risky gains and losses among college students with IGD using the Cups task. Additionally, we further examined the effects of outcome magnitude and probability level on decision-making related to risky gains and losses respectively. Sixty college students with IGD and 42 matched healthy controls (HCs) participated. Results indicated that IGD subjects exhibited generally greater risk taking tendencies than HCs. In comparison to HCs, IGD subjects made more disadvantageous risky choices in the loss domain (but not in the gain domain). Follow-up analyses indicated that the impairment was associated to insensitivity to changes in outcome magnitude and probability level for risky losses among IGD subjects. In addition, higher Internet addiction severity scores were associated with percentage of disadvantageous risky options in the loss domain. These findings emphasize the effect of insensitivity to losses on disadvantageous decisions under risk in the context of IGD, which has implications for future intervention studies.

Thinking about the past, present and future in adolescents growing up in Children's Homes

The present study tested the hypothesis that adolescents growing up in Children's Homes differ from adolescents growing up in a family environment in how they think about their past, present and future, in the way they make decisions about future events and rewards, and in their levels of empathy and perspective taking. The participants were 40 adolescents from Children's Homes in Budapest, Hungary, and 40 age- and gender-matched controls. Group differences were found in participants' past and present time perspectives, and girls from Children's Homes showed reduced consistency in their plans for the future. Additionally, gender differences emerged in empathy, perspective taking, and in participants' present and future time perspectives. We discuss the implications of our findings for interventions to improve the future prospects of adolescents in Children's Homes.

Attention to the neglected: prospects for research on child neglect for the next decade

In 1997, the National Institutes of Health within the United States Department of Health and Human Services reviewed the state of its research on child abuse and neglect (US Department of Health and Human Services, National Institutes of Health, 1997). The findings suggested that although neglect was the most frequent type of child maltreatment, research studies were lacking. Through an unprecedented partnership across federal funding agencies for research on child neglect, research was encouraged in several areas. Over the past fifteen years, consortia of researchers have continued to increase our knowledge of child neglect and to shape the field. Nonetheless, challenges for research on child neglect remain, including the changing demographics of the nation and health disparities. Evidenced-based early interventions and treatments may be an opportunity for prevention of child neglect and improving child welfare services, particularly in an era of health care reform. Developmental researchers across the translational pipeline are encouraged to integrate child neglect research in future studies to inform prevention, treatment and policy efforts for the improved health and well-being of children, families and communities.