Parental anhedonic versus non-anhedonic depressive symptoms and children's reward processing

There is preliminary evidence that children of parents with depression exhibit alterations in reward processing that may increase children's risk for developing psychopathology. However, depression is a heterogeneous disorder, and it is unclear whether specific symptoms of parental depression may be particularly associated with increased risk in children. The current study examined links between parents' anhedonic versus non-anhedonic symptoms of depression and neural indices of reward outcome processing in children. Participants in this study were a community sample of 217 parent-child dyads (children ages 7-11; 53.00% male, 65.90% non-Hispanic White). Children's reward outcome processing was assessed during a simple guessing task with the reward positivity (RewP) event-related potential (ERP), which indexes initial neural responsiveness to positive and negative outcome feedback (e.g., winning or losing money). Higher levels of parental anhedonic, but not non-anhedonic, depressive symptoms were associated with more blunted reactivity to both positive and negative outcome feedback in children. The finding was maintained when statistically controlling for children's own levels of depression and positive affect. These results suggest that parental anhedonia may be a core feature of depression uniquely related to alterations in children's reward processing, which may have important implications for interventions designed to reduce risk in youth.