Trajectories of self-regulation in childhood and reward processing in adolescence

Poor self-regulation and aberrant reward processing are key mechanisms contributing to several adverse outcomes in young people, including mental health problems, academic failure, and risky behaviours. Importantly, poor self-regulation may be a cause of aberrant reward processing, but most of the evidence about their association is cross-sectional or limited to adults and clinical samples of children. Therefore, understanding how the development of self-regulation in childhood may be associated with reward processing in adolescence in the general population is crucial. We used longitudinal data from 13,240 (49.7% females, 83.4% White) participants of the Millennium Cohort Study, a UK nationally-representative birth cohort. Reward processing (ages 11 and 14) was measured using the Cambridge Gambling Task, while self-regulation was assessed at ages 3, 5 and 7 with the Child Social Behaviour Questionnaire. Parallel-process latent growth curve models adjusted for confounding showed that greater early emotional dysregulation predicted more delay aversion and less risk adjustment, while increasing independence self-regulation over time was associated with less deliberation time and greater quality of decision-making in adolescence. Findings suggest that early emotional dysregulation and increasing independence self-regulation may increase and decrease, respectively, risk for poorer decision-making in adolescence, emphasising potential avenues for early intervention.