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The effect of early deprivation on executive attention in middle childhood
Michelle M Loman1, Anna E Johnson, Alissa Westerlund
1Institute of Child Development, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN 55455, USA. loman004@umn.edu
Insights
Post-institutionalized children show sustained attention deficits and impaired inhibitory control, impacting executive attention. These neurobehavioral findings suggest attention regulation difficulties similar to ADHD in these children.
Area of Science:
- Neuroscience
- Developmental Psychology
- Child Psychiatry
Background:
- Children in institutionalized, deprived environments face higher risks of attention and behavior regulation issues.
- Post-institutionalized (PI) children exhibit neurobehavioral correlates of executive attention challenges.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the neurobehavioral underpinnings of executive attention in post-institutionalized (PI) children.
- To compare PI children with internationally adopted children from foster care (PF) and non-adopted children (NA).
Main Methods:
- Assessed 10-11 year old PI, PF, and NA children using go/no-go and Flanker executive attention tasks.
- Measured behavioral performance and event-related potentials (ERPs) including N2 and error-related negativity.
Main Results:
- PI children demonstrated poorer performance on go trials and increased errors on Flanker tasks, indicating sustained attention deficits.
- ERPs revealed smaller N2 amplitude and reduced error-related negativity in PI children, suggesting impaired inhibitory control and error monitoring.
Conclusions:
- Behavioral deficits in PI children appear related to sustained attention rather than solely executive attention.
- ERP findings suggest neural differences in inhibitory control and error monitoring, raising questions about similarities to ADHD attention difficulties.
Background:
Children reared in deprived environments, such as institutions for the care of orphaned or abandoned children, are at increased risk for attention and behavior regulation difficulties. This study examined the neurobehavioral correlates of executive attention in post institutionalized (PI) children.
Methods:
The performance and event-related potentials (ERPs) of 10- and 11-year-old internationally adopted PI children on two executive attention tasks, go/no-go and Flanker, were compared with two groups: children internationally adopted early from foster care (PF) and nonadopted children (NA).
Results:
Behavioral measures suggested problems with sustained attention, with PIs performing more poorly on go trials and not on no-go trials of the go/no-go and made more errors on both congruent and incongruent trials on the Flanker. ERPs suggested differences in inhibitory control and error monitoring, as PIs had smaller N2 amplitude on go/no-go and smaller error-related negativity on Flanker.
Conclusions:
This pattern of results raises questions regarding the nature of attention difficulties for PI children. The behavioral errors are not specific to executive attention and instead likely reflect difficulties in overall sustained attention. The ERP results are consistent with neural activity related to deficits in inhibitory control (N2) and error monitoring (error-related negativity). Questions emerge regarding the similarity of attention regulatory difficulties in PIs to those experienced by non-PI children with ADHD.
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