Electrophysiological correlates of inhibitory control in children: Relations with prenatal maternal risk factors and child psychopathology

Abstract

Inhibitory control plays an important role in children's cognitive and socioemotional development, including their psychopathology. It has been established that contextual factors such as socioeconomic status (SES) and parents' psychopathology are associated with children's inhibitory control. However, the relations between the neural correlates of inhibitory control and contextual factors have been rarely examined in longitudinal studies. In the present study, we used both event-related potential (ERP) components and time-frequency measures of inhibitory control to evaluate the neural pathways between contextual factors, including prenatal SES and maternal psychopathology, and children's behavioral and emotional problems in a large sample of children (N = 560; 51.75% females; M_age = 7.13 years; Range_age = 4-11 years). Results showed that theta power, which was positively predicted by prenatal SES and was negatively related to children's externalizing problems, mediated the longitudinal and negative relation between them. ERP amplitudes and latencies did not mediate the longitudinal association between prenatal risk factors (i.e., prenatal SES and maternal psychopathology) and children's internalizing and externalizing problems. Our findings increase our understanding of the neural pathways linking early risk factors to children's psychopathology.

Keywords: child psychopathology; electrophysiological assessments; inhibitory control; mediation; prenatal risk factors.

Figure 1.

ERP measures: N2 and P3. Average waveforms across all participants for the N2 (left) and the P3 (right), and topographs for each condition and their difference during the selected time window (shaded area).

Figure 2.

Time–frequency dynamics of theta and delta power of Go and No-go trials at the FCz cluster. Plots show time–frequency power for each condition for theta (top left panel) and delta (bottom left panel), and topographs for each condition and their difference during the selected time window (shaded area). The right panels display the time-frequency surfaces of power by condition for frontocentral cluster

Figure 3.

Time–frequency dynamics of theta and delta intertrial phase synchrony (ITPS) of Go and No-go trials at the FCz cluster. Plots show time–frequency ITPS for each condition for theta (top left panel) and delta (bottom left panel), and topographs for each condition and their difference during the selected time window (shaded area). The right panels display the time-frequency surfaces of ITPS by condition for frontocentral cluster

Figure 4.

Model 1: Relations of prenatal SES, theta power, and children’s externalizing behaviors. All predictions were controlled for child sex and child age. Unstandarized and standardized (in parentheses) estimates were presented. See supplementary Table 1 for results of nonsignificant results and results of control variables. *p < .05. **p < .01.