Early exposure to parent-perpetrated intimate partner violence predicts hypervigilant error monitoring.

Early exposure to intimate partner violence (IPV) places children at risk for ongoing emotional difficulties, including problems with self-regulation and high levels of internalizing symptoms. However, the impact of IPV exposure on children's error monitoring remains unknown. The present study utilized electroencephalography (EEG) to examine the impact of exposure to IPV in infancy on error monitoring in middle childhood. Results indicated that parents' perpetration of IPV against their romantic partners when children were under 24 months of age predicted hypervigilant error monitoring in children at age 8 (N = 30, 16 female), as indexed by error-related neural activity (ERN and Pe difference amplitudes), above and beyond the effects of general adversity exposure and parental responsiveness. There was no association between partner perpetration of IPV and children's error monitoring. Results illustrate the harmful effects of early exposure to parent-perpetrated IPV on error monitoring and highlight the importance of targeting children's and parents' cognitive and emotional responses to error commission in psychotherapy.

Unsupportive romantic partner behaviors increase neural reactivity to mistakes.

Romantic relationships involve a range of positive and negative experiences, from supportive and security-enhancing behaviors to unsupportive interactions involving criticism and dismissiveness. The present study aimed to examine the functional impact of these experiences on reactivity to mistakes, as error salience has key implications for adaptive functioning in areas such as goal-striving and appropriate risk-taking. To this end, a study was conducted in which participants completed the Eriksen Flanker Task (EFT) alone and under romantic partner observation while electrophysiological brain activity related to error salience (the error-related negativity (ERN)) was recorded. Findings indicated that unsupportive, but not supportive, partner behaviors were associated with changes in error salience, furthering the notion that negative relationship experiences have a stronger effect on functioning than do positive ones and highlighting the impact of relationship context on reactivity to mistakes.

Early parenting intervention accelerates inhibitory control development among CPS-involved children in middle childhood: A randomized clinical trial.

Children at risk for neglect or abuse are vulnerable to delays in inhibitory control development. Prior findings suggest that early parenting interventions that target parental sensitivity and responsiveness during infancy can improve executive function outcomes of high-risk children during preschool years; however, little is known about how persistent these gains are through middle childhood. Participants included 76 CPS-involved children who were randomly assigned to either the ABC intervention (N = 32) or the Developmental Education for Families (DEF) control intervention (N = 44), and 53 low-risk children. Children completed the Stop Signal Reaction Time (SSRT) paradigm at ages 8 and 10. Intervention group predicted performance on the SSRT at age 8 such that children who received the ABC intervention and children in the low-risk group performed significantly better than children who received the DEF intervention (ABC vs. DEF: Cohen's d = 0.92; low-risk group vs. DEF: d = 0.56). The performances of the ABC and the low-risk groups were not statistically different. There were no significant group differences in SSRT performance at age 10. These findings demonstrate that the ABC intervention has long-term beneficial effects on inhibitory control development in children with a history of early caregiving adversity. A video abstract of this article can be viewed at https://youtu.be/P9oLyfo7pYA.

Depressive symptoms and error-related brain activity in CPS-referred children.

Early adversity such as maltreatment is associated with increased risk for psychopathology and atypical neurological development in children. The present study examined associations between depressive symptoms and error-related brain activity (the error-related negativity, or ERN) among children involved with Child Protective Services (CPS) and among comparison children. Results indicate that the relation between depressive symptoms and ERN amplitude depends on CPS involvement, such that depressive symptoms were associated with blunted ERNs only for CPS-referred children. The present study can inform future research investigating the mechanisms by which experiences of adversity affect the association between symptoms and error-related brain activity.

The power of frontal midline theta and post-error slowing to predict performance recovery: Evidence for compensatory mechanisms.

Past studies utilizing cognitive control tasks have noted that trials following errors are characterized by slowed reaction time. Despite the assumption long held by researchers that this slowing is compensatory (in the service of post-error performance recovery), studies consistently show that post-error trials are no more accurate than post-correct trials. As a result, it has recently been proposed that post-error slowing (PES) is merely part of an orienting response that serves no task-relevant cognitive control purpose. Frontal midline theta (FMθ) oscillations represent another potential compensatory mechanism serving cognitive control processes, yet past studies relying on ERPs have failed to find an association between FMθ and post-error accuracy. The present study investigated the potentially adaptive role of PES and FMθ oscillations during a flanker task using trial-by-trial comparisons. Results indicated that error-related FMθ oscillations signal the need for enhanced top-down cognitive control and that PES supports cognitive control by providing the added time needed to achieve greater confidence in judgment. Overall, findings provide convergent evidence that both error-related FMθ and PES predict performance recovery following errors.

Electrophysiological indicators of inhibitory control deficits in depression.

Ample evidence from behavioral and brain imaging studies suggests that inhibitory control is impaired in depression, though the precise nature of this impairment is unclear. The purpose of the present study was to examine potential deficits in three aspects of inhibitory control - conflict monitoring, conflict resolution, and overt behavioral inhibition - in the context of depressive symptoms. Depressed (n=15) and non-depressed (n=15) participants completed a stop-signal reaction time (SSRT) task while electroencephalography (EEG) data were recorded. EEG results indicate that depression impacts only the conflict resolution phase of inhibitory control, with higher levels of depressive and reflective pondering symptoms associated with poorer conflict resolution. Findings have clear implications for treatments of depression, many of which do not currently target the inhibitory control deficits present in this disorder.

Social value orientation modulates the FRN and P300 in the chicken game.

Social dilemmas pervade daily life, business, and politics. The manners in which these dilemmas are resolved depend in part on the personal characteristics of those involved. One such characteristic is Social Value Orientation (SVO), a trait-like predisposition to maximize cooperative (Pro-Social) or non-cooperative (Pro-Self) outcomes in social relationships. The present study investigated the role of SVO in modulating neural responses to outcomes in a type of social dilemma known as the Chicken Game. The Chicken Game models real-world situations involving two parties independently making a decision between cooperation and aggression. The EEG of Pro-Socials and Pro-Selfs was recorded while playing Chicken with a computer Opponent. Two ERP components were extracted: Feedback-Related Negativity (FRN) and the P300. Despite no behavioral differences in decision (i.e., cooperation, aggression), FRN results indicate that Pro-Socials experienced unreciprocated cooperation as the least desired outcome. Further, P300 results show a main effect for the Opponent's choice, such that the Opponent's cooperation was more salient than aggression. Additionally, an interaction between the Participant's and Opponent's choice showed that the effect for the Opponent's choice only occurred when the Participant chose cooperation. None of the results for P300 were moderated by SVO. For both ERP components, Pro-Selfs showed no differential responding to Chicken outcomes. In addition, FRN magnitude on trial n predicted choice on trial n+1 for Pro-Socials, but not for Pro-Selfs. P300 magnitude on trial n showed no relationship to choice on trial n+1. Results indicate that individual differences in SVO modulate FRN responses to Chicken outcomes, and that these neural reactions may have utility in predicting subsequent behaviors. For P300, there is no evidence of SVO modulation. Our general pattern of FRN responsiveness in Pro-Socials, but not in Pro-Selfs, is related to similar findings in fMRI and EEG research.

How do we trust strangers? The neural correlates of decision making and outcome evaluation of generalized trust.

This study investigates the brain correlates of decision making and outcome evaluation of generalized trust (i.e. trust in unfamiliar social agents)-a core component of social capital which facilitates civic cooperation and economic exchange. We measured 18 (9 male) Chinese participants' event-related potentials while they played the role of the trustor in a one-shot trust game with unspecified social agents (trustees) allegedly selected from a large representative sample. At the decision-making phase, greater N2 amplitudes were found for trustors' distrusting decisions compared to trusting decisions, which may reflect greater cognitive control exerted to distrust. Source localization identified the precentral gyrus as one possible neuronal generator of this N2 component. At the outcome evaluation phase, principal components analysis revealed that the so called feedback-related negativity was in fact driven by a reward positivity, which was greater in response to gain feedback compared to loss feedback. This reduced reward positivity following loss feedback may indicate that the absence of reward for trusting decisions was unexpected by the trustor. In addition, we found preliminary evidence suggesting that the decision-making processes may differ between high trustors and low trustors.

Pay attention to me! Late ERPs reveal gender differences in attention allocated to romantic partners.

The present study employed late ERPs to examine differences in the association between neural responses to romantic partners and relationship quality factors across men and women. Participants passively viewed photos of their romantic partners, celebrities, and strangers during a computerized facial processing task. All participants demonstrated enhanced positivity to partner faces at late ERP components (P3 and LPP), furthering the notion that significant others elicit more motivated and sustained attention than do other familiar or unfamiliar individuals. Neural responses to romantic partner faces were influenced by factors including overall relationship quality, investment, and communication quality, with associations varying by gender. Results highlight the key role that relationship quality factors play in the immediate processing of romantic partners-a finding with implications for couples counseling and research.

Decreased response monitoring in individuals with symptoms of trichotillomania.

Trichotillomania (TTM) was long classified as an impulse-control disorder; however, the many characteristics it shares with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) led to its recategorization in the DSM-V. The present study aimed to assess and inform the taxonomic placement of TTM through an examination of its neural correlates. While research has consistently associated OCD with enhanced response monitoring, the present study investigated whether a similar neural process is associated with TTM. Undergraduates reporting TTM symptoms and controls performed a modified version of the flanker task, and their event-related potentials were examined for between-group differences in error-related negativity (ERN). Results confirm that individuals who have symptoms of hair pulling have significantly smaller ERNs than the control group. Smaller ERNs reflect decreased levels of response monitoring and support the idea that TTM is distinct from OCD.

The N400 as an index of racial stereotype accessibility.

The current research examined the viability of the N400, an event-related potential (ERP) related to the detection of semantic incongruity, as an index of both stereotype accessibility and interracial prejudice. Participants' EEG was recorded while they completed a sequential priming task, in which negative or positive, stereotypically black (African American) or white (Caucasian American) traits followed the presentation of either a black or white face acting as a prime. ERP examination focused on the N400, but additionally examined N100 and P200 reactivity. Replicating and extending previous N400 stereotype research, results indicated that the N400 can indeed function as an index of stereotype accessibility in an interracial domain, as greater N400 reactivity was elicited by trials in which the face prime was incongruent with the target trait than when primes and traits matched. Furthermore, N400 activity was moderated by participants' self-reported explicit bias. More explicitly biased participants demonstrated greater N400 reactivity to stereotypically white traits following black faces than black traits following black faces. P200 activity was additionally associated with participants' implicit biases, as more implicitly biased participants similarly demonstrated greater P200 reactivity to stereotypically white traits following black faces than black traits following black faces.

How friendly is a little friendly competition? Evidence of self-interest and empathy during outcome evaluation.

Although previous studies have shown that brain potentials recorded from passive observers differ when gambling-task outcomes are delivered to a friend or a stranger, it is unclear how these outcome evaluations are reflected in brain potentials during active competition. The present study recorded event-related potentials (ERP) from 16 normal adults playing an interactive gambling task against both a friend and a stranger. In this task, the P300 was modulated by the feedback valence (gain or loss) and the nature of the interpersonal relationship, such that it was larger when competing against strangers. Regression analyses indicated that empathy to another's personal distress was negatively related to P300 amplitudes when competing against friends. The dFRN, defined as the difference between losses and gains, varied with Perspective-Taking when competing against friends, such that smaller dFRN amplitudes were correlated with increased Perspective-Taking. The modulation of ERP components indicates that interpersonal relationships may influence outcome evaluations in competitive situations. Correlations between ERP components and empathy measures also provide preliminary support of a relationship between one's empathy and the processing of outcomes during competition against a friend.

Response monitoring and cognitive control in childhood obesity.

The ability to discern when actions deviate from goals and adjust behavior accordingly is crucial for efforts at self-regulation, including managing one's weight. We examined whether children with obesity differed from controls in response monitoring, an aspect of cognitive control that involves registering one's errors. Participants performed a cognitive interference task, responding to the colors of arrows while ignoring their orientations, and error-related neural activity was indexed via response-locked event-related potentials (ERPs). Compared to controls, participants with obesity exhibited significantly blunted "error-related negativity", an ERP component linked to response monitoring. Participants with obesity also exhibited a marginally blunted "error-related positivity", an ERP component linked to late-stage error processing, as well as in behavioral indices of cognitive control. These results suggest that childhood obesity may be associated with reduced response monitoring and that this aspect of cognitive control may play an important role in health-related self-regulatory behavior.

Electrophysiological responses to threat in youth with and without Posttraumatic Stress Disorder.

The current study was designed to examine event-related brain potentials and autonomic responses to pictures indicating threat, relative to non-threat, and acoustic startle reflexes in traumatized youth diagnosed with PTSD, relative to non-exposed children, before and after receiving psychotherapy. Children in the control group were individually yoked and demographically matched to the PTSD group. Both groups displayed enhanced late positive potentials and more prolonged heart rate deceleration to pictures indicating threat, relative to non-threat, and larger skin conductance responses to pictures indicating threat, relative to non-threat, at time one. At time two, controls appeared to habituate, as reflected by an overall attenuated skin conductance response, whereas the PTSD group showed little change. Across time points the PTSD group exhibited greater acoustic startle reflexes than the control group. Psychotherapy and symptom reduction was not associated with electrophysiology. Drawing from the adult literature, this study was an attempt to address the scarcity of research examining electrophysiological irregularities in childhood PTSD. The overall results suggest that children and adolescents allocate more attention to threat-related stimuli regardless of PTSD status, and exaggerated startle and a possible failure to habituate skin conductance responses to threat-related stimuli in youth with versus without PTSD.

Interpretation of ambiguous social scenarios in social phobia and depression: evidence from event-related brain potentials.

In the current study, event-related potentials (ERPs) and behavioral responses were measured in individuals meeting diagnostic criteria for social phobia, depression, their combination, or neither in order to examine the unique and combined effects of social phobia and depression on the interpretation of ambiguous social scenarios. ERPs revealed a lack of positive interpretation bias and some suggestion of a negative bias in the semantic expectancy N4 component across all clinical groups. Furthermore, socially phobic and comorbid individuals showed reductions in baseline attention allocation to the task, as indexed by P6 amplitude. RT and accuracy likewise revealed a lack of positive interpretation bias across disordered groups. When considered on a continuum across all samples, social phobia and depression symptoms were related to the N4 interpretation bias effect whereas P6 amplitude reduction and RT interpretation bias appeared uniquely associated with social phobia.

Seeing the silver lining: potential benefits of trauma exposure in college students.

In the current study we compare college students exposed to a potentially traumatic event (PTE) meeting self-report criteria for Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), PTE-exposed students not meeting criteria for PTSD, and non-exposed students on measures of perceived social support, self-esteem, and optimism (i.e., personal resources) and report use of specific coping strategies. Results indicate that the PTE-exposed/probable PTSD group reported fewer personal resources, greater use of avoidance-focused coping, and less use of approach-focused coping than the other two groups. The PTE-exposed/no PTSD group reported greater perceived social support and less use of avoidance-focused coping than the non-exposed group. We discuss the findings' implications for the prevention and treatment of trauma-related psychopathology.

Cognitive inefficiency in depressive undergraduates: stroop processing and ERPs.

Evidence from neuroimaging studies indicates that depressive symptomatology is associated with inefficient recruitment of prefrontal brain regions while performing tasks that tax executive function. In the current study, we investigated the time-course and ERP signature of inefficient executive functioning using a verbal Stroop color-naming task. Twenty (20) undergraduates with moderate to severe BDI-II depression scores and 20 low-scoring controls completed the task. Performance measures did not differ between the two groups. Overt reaction and P300 latencies indicated that all participants showed prominent Stroop effects, such that incongruent responses were delayed compared to congruent. Effects of task condition on the frontal N450 indicated that depressive participants differentiated congruent and incongruent trials earlier than did controls, and that the size of the congruency effect on the N450 was related to self-reported trait rumination among depressive participants. Following this effect, depressive participants showed larger P300s, suggesting an over-commitment of cognitive control resources in the depressive participants. These data lend further evidence to the cortical inefficiency hypothesis and extend the literature by indicating possible improper timing of neural activations during an executive task in depressive undergraduates.

Perceived parental support predicts enhanced late positive event-related brain potentials to parent faces.

This study examined event-related brain potentials in college students viewing facial pictures of their parents, celebrities, and strangers in the context of a guessing task. A temporal principal component analysis of data obtained from midline electrode sites was used to extract a component reflecting the mid- to late-positive deflection observed between 200 and 500ms following stimulus onset. Parent faces elicited enhanced positivity compared to celebrity and stranger faces suggesting greater attention allocation to parent faces. In addition, greater perceived parental support predicted larger factor scores to parent faces relative to non-parent faces. Greater perceived negative interaction with parent, however, attenuated this relationship.

Impaired anticipatory event-related potentials in schizophrenia.

Deficits in anticipation are implicated across a variety of cognitive and emotional processes in schizophrenia. Although diminished anticipatory event-related potentials (ERPs) have been detected during tasks requiring motor response preparation in schizophrenia, no prior ERP study has examined non-motor-related anticipatory processes or used motivationally engaging stimuli. Thirty-four schizophrenia outpatients and 36 healthy controls completed a cued, reaction-time contingent picture viewing task to assess two types of anticipatory ERPs, one involving motor response preparation (Contingent Negative Variation [CNV]) and one not involving motor preparation (Stimulus Preceding Negativity [SPN]). The ERP paradigm included emotional and non-emotional pictures, and participants also completed trait anhedonia questionnaires. Patients and controls demonstrated similar patterns of reaction time and self-reported emotional responses to the pictures. However, patients demonstrated generally lower CNV and SPN across pleasant, neutral, and unpleasant picture conditions. Patients also reported lower anticipatory pleasure than controls on a trait questionnaire. Schizophrenia patients demonstrate diminished motor- and non-motor-related anticipatory processing, which may have wide-ranging adverse functional consequences.

Increasing negative emotions by reappraisal enhances subsequent cognitive control: a combined behavioral and electrophysiological study.

To what degree do cognitively based strategies of emotion regulation impact subsequent cognitive control? Here, we investigated this question by interleaving a cognitive task with emotion regulation trials, where regulation occurred through cognitive reappraisal. In addition to obtaining self-reports of emotion regulation, we used the late positive potential (LPP) of the event-related brain potential as an objective index of emotion regulation. On each trial, participants maintained, decreased, or increased their emotional response to an unpleasant picture and then responded to a Stroop stimulus. Results revealed that (1) the magnitude of the LPP was decreased with reappraisal instructions to decrease negative emotion and were enhanced with reappraisal instructions to increase negative emotion; (2) after cognitive reappraisal was used to increase the intensity of negative emotion, RT interference in the subsequent Stroop trial was significantly reduced; and (3) increasing negative emotions by reappraisal also modulated the cognitive control-related sustained potential. These results suggest that increasing negative emotions by cognitive reappraisal heightens cognitive control, which may be sustained for a short time after the regulation event.