Neural heterogeneity underlying late adolescent motivational processing is linked to individual differences in behavioral sensation seeking.

Adolescent risk-taking, including sensation seeking (SS), is often attributed to developmental changes in connectivity among brain regions implicated in cognitive control and reward processing. Despite considerable scientific and popular interest in this neurodevelopmental framework, there are few empirical investigations of adolescent functional connectivity, let alone examinations of its links to SS behavior. The studies that have been done focus on mean-based approaches and leave unanswered questions about individual differences in neurodevelopment and behavior. The goal of this paper is to take a person-specific approach to the study of adolescent functional connectivity during a continuous motivational state, and to examine links between connectivity and self-reported SS behavior in 104 adolescents (MAge  = 19.3; SDAge  = 1.3). Using Group Iterative Multiple Model Estimation (GIMME), person-specific connectivity during two neuroimaging runs of a monetary incentive delay task was estimated among 12 a priori brain regions of interest representing reward, cognitive, and salience networks. Two data-driven subgroups were detected, a finding that was consistent between both neuroimaging runs, but associations with SS were only found in the first run, potentially reflecting neural habituation in the second run. Specifically, the subgroup that had unique connections between reward-related regions had greater SS and showed a distinctive relation between connectivity strength in the reward regions and SS. These findings provide novel evidence for heterogeneity in adolescent brain-behavior relations by showing that subsets of adolescents have unique associations between neural motivational processing and SS. Findings have broader implications for future work on reward processing, as they demonstrate that brain-behavior relations may attenuate across runs.

Reciprocal associations between implicit attitudes and drinking in emerging adulthood.

BACKGROUND: Implicit alcohol attitudes are considered important in the etiology of drinking, and theory posits reciprocal associations between them. Research testing reciprocal associations between implicit attitudes (using the Implicit Association Task, IAT) and drinking is limited by a failure to consider multiple processes influencing performance on the IAT and to disaggregate within- and between-person effects. The current study addressed these limitations by using a diffusion model to analyze IAT data and Latent Curve Models with Structured Residuals to test reciprocal associations. METHODS: The sample included 314 emerging adults from the community (52% female; predominantly non-Hispanic Caucasian (76%) or African American (15%)) assessed annually for three years. Differences between IAT conditions in the drift rate parameter of the EZ-diffusion model (vΔ) were used as an alternative to traditional response-time-based indices from the IAT (d-scores). Differences in drift rate have been found to index implicit attitudes effectively. RESULTS: Within-person reciprocal associations were supported, but between-person associations were not. Positive implicit alcohol attitudes (vΔ) were prospectively associated with heavy drinking, which was positively associated with subsequent positive implicit alcohol attitudes. CONCLUSIONS: We found that positive implicit alcohol attitudes and heavy drinking reinforce each other in a negative cascade within individuals. The results highlight the importance of disaggregating within- and between-person prospective effects when testing dual process models and suggest that the diffusion model may be a fruitful approach to enhance the construct validity of IAT assessed implicit attitudes.

Computational modeling reveals strategic and developmental differences in the behavioral impact of reward across adolescence.

Studies of reward effects on behavior in adolescence typically rely on performance metrics that confound myriad cognitive and non-cognitive processes, making it challenging to determine which process is impacted by reward. The present longitudinal study applied the diffusion decision model to a reward task to isolate the influence of reward on response caution from influences of processing and motor speed. Participants completed three annual assessments from early to middle adolescence (N = 387, 55% female, Mage  = 12.1 at Wave 1; Mage  = 13.1 at Wave 2, Mage  = 14.1 at Wave 3) and three annual assessments in late adolescence (Mages  = 17.8, 18.9, 19.9). At each assessment, participants completed a two-choice reaction time task under conditions of no-reward and a block in which points were awarded for speeded accuracy. Reward reduced response caution at all waves, as expected, but had a greater impact as teens moved from early to middle adolescence. Simulations to identify optimal response caution showed that teens were overly cautious in early adolescence but became too focused on speed over accuracy by middle adolescence. By late adolescence, participants adopted response styles that maximized reward. Further, response style was associated with both internalizing and externalizing symptoms in early-to-middle adolescence, providing evidence for the construct validity of a diffusion model approach in this developmental period.

The role of parenting in the intergenerational transmission of executive functioning: A genetically informed approach.

Deficits in executive functioning both run in families and serve as a transdiagnostic risk factor for psychopathology. The present study employed twin modeling to examine parenting as an environmental pathway underlying the intergenerational transmission of executive functioning in an at-risk community sample of children and adolescents (N = 354 pairs, 167 monozygotic). Using structural equation modeling of multi-informant reports of parenting and a multi-method measure of child executive functioning, we found that better parent executive functioning related to less harsh, warmer parenting, which in turn related to better child executive functioning. Second, we assessed the etiology of executive functioning via the nuclear twin family model, finding large non-shared environmental effects (E = .69) and low-to-moderate heritability (A = .22). We did not find evidence of shared environmental effects or passive genotype-environment correlation. Third, a bivariate twin model revealed significant shared environmental overlap between both warm and harsh parenting and child executive functioning (which may indicate either passive genotype-environment correlation or environmental mediation), and non-shared environmental overlap between only harsh parenting and child executive functioning (indicating an effect of harsh parenting separable from genetic confounds). In summary, genetics contribute to the intergenerational transmission of executive functioning, with environmental mechanisms, including harsh parenting, also making unique contributions.

Subtypes of inhibitory and reward activation associated with substance use variation in adolescence: A latent profile analysis of brain imaging data.

The present study identified subgroups based on inhibitory and reward activation, two key neural functions involved in risk-taking behavior, and then tested the extent to which subgroup differences varied by age, sex, behavioral and familial risk, and substance use. Participants were 145 young adults (18-21 years old; 40.0% female) from the Michigan Longitudinal Study. Latent profile analysis (LPA) was used to establish subgroups using task-based brain activations. Demographic and substance use differences between subgroups were then examined in logistic regression analyses. Whole-brain task activations during a functional magnetic resonance imaging go/no-go task and monetary incentive delay task were used to identify beta weights as input for LPA modeling. A four-class model showed the best fit with the data. Subgroups were categorized as: (1) low inhibitory activation/moderate reward activation (39.7%), (2) moderate inhibitory activation/low reward activation (22.7%), (3) moderate inhibitory activation/high reward activation (25.2%), and (4) high inhibitory activation/high reward activation (12.4%). Compared with the other subgroups, Class 2 was older, less likely to have parental alcohol use disorder, and had less alcohol use. Class 4 was the youngest and had greater marijuana use. Classes 1 and 3 did not differ significantly from the other subgroups. These findings demonstrate that LPA applied to brain activations can be used to identify distinct neural profiles that may explain heterogeneity in substance use outcomes and may inform more targeted substance use prevention and intervention efforts.

Prediction of neurocognition in youth from resting state fMRI.

Difficulties with higher-order cognitive functions in youth are a potentially important vulnerability factor for the emergence of problematic behaviors and a range of psychopathologies. This study examined 2013 9-10 year olds in the first data release from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development 21-site consortium study in order to identify resting state functional connectivity patterns that predict individual-differences in three domains of higher-order cognitive functions: General Ability, Speed/Flexibility, and Learning/Memory. For General Ability scores in particular, we observed consistent cross-site generalizability, with statistically significant predictions in 14 out of 15 held-out sites. These results survived several tests for robustness including replication in split-half analysis and in a low head motion subsample. We additionally found that connectivity patterns involving task control networks and default mode network were prominently implicated in predicting differences in General Ability across participants. These findings demonstrate that resting state connectivity can be leveraged to produce generalizable markers of neurocognitive functioning. Additionally, they highlight the importance of task control-default mode network interconnections as a major locus of individual differences in cognitive functioning in early adolescence.

Characterizing the role of the pre-SMA in the control of speed/accuracy trade-off with directed functional connectivity mapping and multiple solution reduction.

Several plausible theories of the neural implementation of speed/accuracy trade-off (SAT), the phenomenon in which individuals may alternately emphasize speed or accuracy during the performance of cognitive tasks, have been proposed, and multiple lines of evidence point to the involvement of the pre-supplemental motor area (pre-SMA). However, as the nature and directionality of the pre-SMA's functional connections to other regions involved in cognitive control and task processing are not known, its precise role in the top-down control of SAT remains unclear. Although recent advances in cross-sectional path modeling provide a promising way of characterizing these connections, such models are limited by their tendency to produce multiple equivalent solutions. In a sample of healthy adults (N = 18), the current study uses the novel approach of Group Iterative Multiple Model Estimation for Multiple Solutions (GIMME-MS) to assess directed functional connections between the pre-SMA, other regions previously linked to control of SAT, and regions putatively involved in evidence accumulation for the decision task. Results reveal a primary role of the pre-SMA for modulating activity in regions involved in the decision process but suggest that this region receives top-down input from the DLPFC. Findings also demonstrate the utility of GIMME-MS and solution-reduction methods for obtaining valid directional inferences from connectivity path models.

A diffusion modeling approach to understanding contextual cueing effects in children with ADHD.

BACKGROUND: Strong theoretical models suggest implicit learning deficits may exist among children with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). METHOD: We examine implicit contextual cueing (CC) effects among children with ADHD (n = 72) and non-ADHD Controls (n = 36). RESULTS: Using Ratcliff's drift diffusion model, we found that among Controls, the CC effect is due to improvements in attentional guidance and to reductions in response threshold. Children with ADHD did not show a CC effect; although they were able to use implicitly acquired information to deploy attentional focus, they had more difficulty adjusting their response thresholds. CONCLUSIONS: Improvements in attentional guidance and reductions in response threshold together underlie the CC effect. Results are consistent with neurocognitive models of ADHD that posit subcortical dysfunction but intact spatial attention, and encourage the use of alternative data analytic methods when dealing with reaction time data.

Effects of anonymous peer observation on adolescents' preference for immediate rewards.

Research suggests that the presence of peers influences adolescent risk-taking by increasing the perceived reward value of risky decisions. While prior work has involved observation of participants by their friends, the current study examined whether observation by an anonymous peer could elicit similarly increased reward sensitivity. Late adolescent participants completed a delay discounting task either alone or under the belief that performance was being observed from a neighboring room by an unknown viewer of the same gender and age. Even in this limited social context, participants demonstrated a significantly increased preference for smaller, immediate rewards when they believed that they were being watched. This outcome challenges several intuitive accounts of the peer effect on adolescent risk-taking, and indicates that the peer influence on reward sensitivity during late adolescence is not dependent on familiarity with the observer. The findings have both theoretical and practical implications for our understanding of social influences on adolescents' risky behavior.

The link between daily affective complexity and anxiety is altered by oral contraceptive use.

Affective complexity - the unique ways in which individuals' emotions covary and differentiate - is an important aspect of internalizing problems. For instance, daily affective complexity has been linked to anxiety increases in women and to decreases in men. The mechanisms underlying this gender difference have not been widely investigated, but a role for ovarian hormones is likely. Research on oral contraceptives (OCs) provides promising insights into such mechanisms, as OCs suppress endogenous ovarian hormone production and vary in exogenous hormone formulations. Thus, the goal of this study was to examine links between daily affective complexity and internalizing problems in OC users (n = 84), focusing on dimensionally-assessed anxiety, and to investigate whether the links varied by pill formulation. Affective complexity was operationalized as number of factors for each person, as estimated by p-technique (i.e., person-specific factor analysis) of 75-day intensive longitudinal data. There was not a relation between affective complexity and anxiety in OC users, and this did not depend on OC pill formulation (i.e., estrogenic, progestational, or androgenic activities). Thus, OC use may blunt the relation between affective complexity and anxiety, as OC users had a relation in between the established positive relation for naturally cycling women and the inverse for men (despite a similar range of factors). Findings are consistent with a growing literature showing that OC use modulates stress and anxiety-linked processes, and suggest that gendered mechanisms underlying the relation between affective complexity and anxiety may be suppressed along with ovarian hormones in OC users.

Flexible adaptation of task-positive brain networks predicts efficiency of evidence accumulation.

Efficiency of evidence accumulation (EEA), an individual's ability to selectively gather goal-relevant information to make adaptive choices, is thought to be a key neurocomputational mechanism associated with cognitive functioning and transdiagnostic risk for psychopathology. However, the neural basis of individual differences in EEA is poorly understood, especially regarding the role of largescale brain network dynamics. We leverage data from 5198 participants from the Human Connectome Project and Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development Study to demonstrate a strong association between EEA and flexible adaptation to cognitive demand in the "task-positive" frontoparietal and dorsal attention networks. Notably, individuals with higher EEA displayed divergent task-positive network activation across n-back task conditions: higher activation under high cognitive demand (2-back) and lower activation under low demand (0-back). These findings suggest that brain networks' flexible adaptation to cognitive demands is a key neural underpinning of EEA.

Sex differences in distributed error-related neural activation in problem-drinking young adults.

BACKGROUND: Detecting and responding to errors is central to goal-directed behavior and cognitive control and is thought to be supported by a network of structures that includes the anterior cingulate cortex and anterior insula. Sex differences in the maturational timing of cognitive control systems create differential periods of vulnerability for psychiatric conditions, such as substance use disorders. METHODS: We examined sex differences in error-related activation across an array of distributed brain regions during a Go/No-Go task in young adults with problem alcohol use (N=69; 34 females; M=19.4 years). Regions of interest previously linked to error-related activation, including anterior cingulate cortex, insula, and frontoparietal structures, were selected in a term-based meta-analysis. Individual differences in their responses to false alarm (FA) inhibitory errors relative to "go" trials (FA>GO) and correct rejections (FA>CR) were indexed using multivariate summary measures derived from principal components analysis. RESULTS: FA>GO and FA>CR activation both revealed a first component that explained the majority of the variance across error-associated regions and displayed the strongest loadings on salience network structures. Compared to females, males exhibited significantly higher levels of the FA>GO component but not the FA>CR component. CONCLUSIONS: Males exhibit greater salience network activation in response to inhibitory errors, which could be attributed to sex differences in error-monitoring processes or to other functions (e.g., novelty detection). The findings are relevant for the further characterization of sex differences in cognitive control and may have implications for understanding individual differences in those at risk for substance use or other cognitive control disorders.

100 days of Adolescence: Elucidating Externalizing Behaviors Through the Daily Assessment of Inhibitory Control.

Inhibitory control is a transdiagnostic risk factor for externalizing behaviors, particularly during adolescence. Despite advances in understanding links between inhibitory control and externalizing behaviors across youth on average, significant questions remain about how these links play out in the day-to-day lives of individual adolescents. The goals of the current study were to: (1) validate a novel 100-occasion measure of inhibitory control; (2) assess links between day-to-day fluctuations in inhibitory control and individual differences in externalizing behaviors; and (3) illustrate the potential of intensive longitudinal studies for person-specific analyses of adolescent externalizing behaviors. Participants were 106 youth (57.5% female, Mage = 13.34 years; SDage = 1.92) who completed a virtual baseline session followed by 100 daily surveys, including an adapted Stroop Color Word task designed to assess inhibitory control. Results suggested that the novel task was generally reliable and valid, and that inhibitory control fluctuated across days in ways that were meaningfully associated with individual differences in baseline impulsive behaviors. Results of illustrative personalized analyses suggested that inhibitory control had more influence in the daily networks of adolescents who used substances during the 100 days than in a matched set of adolescents who did not. This work marks a path forward in intensive longitudinal research by validating a novel inhibitory control measure, revealing that daily fluctuations in inhibitory control may be a unique construct broadly relevant to adolescent externalizing problems, and at the same time, highlighting that links between daily inhibitory control and impulsive behaviors are adolescent-specific.

Functional brain connectivity predictors of prospective substance use initiation and their environmental correlates.

Background: Early substance use initiation (SUI) places youth at substantially higher risk for later substance use disorders. Furthermore, adolescence is a critical period for the maturation of brain networks, the pace and magnitude of which are susceptible to environmental influences and may shape risk for SUI. Methods: We examined whether patterns of functional brain connectivity during rest (rsFC), measured longitudinally in pre-and-early adolescence, can predict future SUI. In an independent sub-sample, we also tested whether these patterns are associated with key environmental factors, specifically neighborhood pollution and socioeconomic dimensions. We utilized data from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study®. SUI was defined as first-time use of at least one full dose of alcohol, nicotine, cannabis, or other drugs. We created a control group (N = 228) of participants without SUI who were matched with the SUI group (N = 233) on age, sex, race/ethnicity, and parental income and education. Results: Multivariate analysis showed that whole-brain rsFC prior to SUI during 9-10 and 11-12 years of age successfully differentiated the prospective SUI and control groups. This rsFC signature was expressed more at older ages in both groups, suggesting a pattern of accelerated maturation in the SUI group in the years prior to SUI. In an independent sub-sample (N = 2,854) and adjusted for family socioeconomic factors, expression of this rsFC pattern was associated with higher pollution, but not neighborhood disadvantage. Conclusion: Brain functional connectivity patterns in early adolescence that are linked to accelerated maturation and environmental exposures can predict future SUI in youth.

Benefits and challenges of using logistic regression to assess neuropsychological performance validity: Evidence from a simulation study.

Logistic regression (LR) is recognized as a promising method for making decisions about neuropsychological performance validity by integrating information across multiple measures. However, this method has yet to be widely adopted in clinical practice, likely because several open questions remain about its utility relative to simpler methods, its effectiveness across different clinical contexts, and its feasibility at sample sizes common in the field. The current study addresses these questions by assessing classification performance of logistic regression and alternative methods across an array of simulated data sets.We simulated scores of valid and invalid performers on 6 tests designed to mimic the psychometric and distributional properties of real performance validity measures. Out-of-sample predictive performance of LR and a commonly used alternative ("vote counting") was assessed across different base rates, validity measure properties, and sample sizes.LR improved classification accuracy by 2%-12% across simulation conditions, primarily by improving sensitivity. False positives and negatives can be further reduced when LR predictions are interpreted as continuous, rather than binary. LR made robust predictions at sample sizes feasible for neuropsychology research (N = 307) and when as few as 2 tests with good psychometric properties were used.Although training and test data sets of at least several hundred individuals may be required to develop and evaluate LR models for use in clinical practice, LR promises to be an efficient and powerful tool for improving judgements about performance validity. We offer several recommendations for model development and LR interpretation in a clinical setting.

The influence of autoregressive relation strength and search strategy on directionality recovery in group iterative multiple model estimation.

Unified structural equation modeling (uSEM) implemented in the group iterative multiple model estimation (GIMME) framework has recently been widely used for characterizing within-person network dynamics of behavioral and functional neuroimaging variables. Previous studies have established that GIMME accurately recovers the presence of relations between variables. However, recovery of relation directionality is less consistent, which is concerning given the importance of directionality estimates for many research questions. There is evidence that strong autoregressive relations may aid directionality recovery and indirect evidence that a novel version of GIMME allowing for multiple solutions could improve recovery when such relations are weak, but it remains unclear how these strategies perform under a range of study conditions. Using comprehensive simulations that varied the strength of autoregressive relations among other factors, this study evaluated the directionality recovery of two GIMME search strategies: (a) estimating autoregressive relations by default in the null model (GIMME-AR) and (b) generating multiple solution paths (GIMME-MS). Both strategies recovered directionality best-and were roughly equivalent in performance-when autoregressive relations were strong (e.g., ß = .60). When they were weak (ß ≤ .10), GIMME-MS displayed an advantage, although overall directionality recovery was modest. Analyses of empirical data in which autoregressive relations were characteristically strong (resting state functional MRI) versus weak (daily diary) mirrored simulation results and confirmed that these strategies can disagree on directionality when autoregressive relations are weak. Findings have important implications for psychological and neuroimaging applications of uSEM/GIMME and suggest specific scenarios in which researchers might or might not be confident in directionality results. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

A cognitive process modeling framework for the ABCD study stop-signal task.

The Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study is a longitudinal neuroimaging study of unprecedented scale that is in the process of following over 11,000 youth from middle childhood though age 20. However, a design feature of the study's stop-signal task violates "context independence", an assumption critical to current non-parametric methods for estimating stop-signal reaction time (SSRT), a key measure of inhibitory ability in the study. This has led some experts to call for the task to be changed and for previously collected data to be used with caution. We present a cognitive process modeling framework, the RDEX-ABCD model, that provides a parsimonious explanation for the impact of this design feature on "go" stimulus processing and successfully accounts for key behavioral trends in the ABCD data. Simulation studies using this model suggest that failing to account for the context independence violations in the ABCD design can lead to erroneous inferences in several realistic scenarios. However, we demonstrate that RDEX-ABCD effectively addresses these violations and can be used to accurately measure SSRT along with an array of additional mechanistic parameters of interest (e.g., attention to the stop signal, cognitive efficiency), advancing investigators' ability to draw valid and nuanced inferences from ABCD data. AVAILABILITY OF DATA AND MATERIALS: Data from the ABCD Study are available through the NIH Data Archive (NDA): nda.nih.gov/abcd. Code for all analyses featured in this study is openly available on the Open Science Framework (OSF): osf.io/2h8a7/.

Socioeconomic resources in youth are linked to divergent patterns of network integration and segregation across the brain's transmodal axis.

Socioeconomic resources (SER) calibrate the developing brain to the current context, which can confer or attenuate risk for psychopathology across the lifespan. Recent multivariate work indicates that SER levels powerfully influence intrinsic functional connectivity patterns across the entire brain. Nevertheless, the neurobiological meaning of these widespread alterations remains poorly understood, despite its translational promise for early risk identification, targeted intervention, and policy reform. In the present study, we leverage the resources of graph theory to precisely characterize multivariate and univariate associations between household SER and the functional integration and segregation (i.e., participation coefficient, within-module degree) of brain regions across major cognitive, affective, and sensorimotor systems during the resting state in 5,821 youth (ages 9-10 years) from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study. First, we establish that decomposing the brain into profiles of integration and segregation captures more than half of the multivariate association between SER and functional connectivity with greater parsimony (100-fold reduction in number of features) and interpretability. Second, we show that the topological effects of SER are not uniform across the brain; rather, higher SER levels are related to greater integration of somatomotor and subcortical systems, but greater segregation of default mode, orbitofrontal, and cerebellar systems. Finally, we demonstrate that the effects of SER are spatially patterned along the unimodal-transmodal gradient of brain organization. These findings provide critical interpretive context for the established and widespread effects of SER on brain organization, indicating that SER levels differentially configure the intrinsic functional architecture of developing unimodal and transmodal systems. This study highlights both sensorimotor and higher-order networks that may serve as neural markers of environmental stress and opportunity, and which may guide efforts to scaffold healthy neurobehavioral development among disadvantaged communities of youth.

Generalizable prediction of childhood ADHD symptoms from neurocognitive testing and youth characteristics.

Childhood attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) symptoms are believed to result from disrupted neurocognitive development. However, evidence for the clinical and predictive value of neurocognitive assessments in this context has been mixed, and there have been no large-scale efforts to quantify their potential for use in generalizable models that predict individuals' ADHD symptoms in new data. Using data drawn from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development Study (ABCD), a consortium that recruited a diverse sample of over 10,000 youth (ages 9-10 at baseline) across 21 U.S. sites, we develop and test cross-validated machine learning models for predicting youths' ADHD symptoms using neurocognitive abilities, demographics, and child and family characteristics. Models used baseline demographic and biometric measures, geocoded neighborhood data, youth reports of child and family characteristics, and neurocognitive tests to predict parent- and teacher-reported ADHD symptoms at the 1-year and 2-year follow-up time points. Predictive models explained 15-20% of the variance in 1-year ADHD symptoms for ABCD Study sites that were left out of the model-fitting process and 12-13% of the variance in 2-year ADHD symptoms. Models displayed high generalizability across study sites and trivial loss of predictive power when transferred from training data to left-out data. Features from multiple domains contributed meaningfully to prediction, including neurocognition, sex, self-reported impulsivity, parental monitoring, and screen time. This work quantifies the information value of neurocognitive abilities and other child characteristics for predicting ADHD symptoms and provides a foundational method for predicting individual youths' symptoms in new data across contexts.

Neighborhood air pollution is negatively associated with neurocognitive maturation in early adolescence.

The ability to maintain focus and process task-relevant information continues developing during adolescence, but the specific physical environmental factors that influence this development remain poorly characterized. One candidate factor is air pollution. Evidence suggests that small particulate matter and NO2 concentrations in the air may negatively impact cognitive development in childhood. We assessed the relationship between neighborhood air pollution and the changes in performance on the n-back task, a test of attention and working memory, in the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study's baseline (ages 9-10) and two-year-follow-up releases (Y2, ages 11-12; n = 5,256). In the behavioral domain, multiple linear regression showed that developmental change in n-back task performance was negatively associated with neighborhood air pollution (ß = -.044, t = -3.11, p = .002), adjusted for covariates capturing baseline cognitive performance of the child, their parental income and education, family conflicts, and their neighborhood's population density, crime rate, perceived safety, and Area Deprivation Index (ADI). The strength of the adjusted association for air pollution was similar to parental income, family conflict, and neighborhood ADI. In the neuroimaging domain, we evaluated a previously published youth cognitive composite Connectome-based Predictive Model (ccCPM), and again found that decreased developmental change in the strength of the ccCPM from pre- to early adolescence was associated with neighborhood air pollution (ß = -.110, t = -2.69, p = .007), adjusted for the covariates mentioned above and head motion. Finally, we found that the developmental change in ccCPM strength was predictive of the developmental change in n-back performance (r = .157, p < .001), and there was an indirect-only mediation where the effect of air pollution on change in n-back performance was mediated by the change in the ccCPM strength (ßindirect effect = -.013, p = .029). In conclusion, neighborhood air pollution is associated with lags in the maturation of youth cognitive performance and decreased strengthening of the brain networks supporting cognitive abilities over time.