Early-life adversity (ELA) is strongly associated with risk for psychopathology. Within adversity, deprivation, and threat may lead to psychopathology through different intermediary pathways. Specifically, deprivation, defined as the absence of expected cognitive and social inputs, is associated with lower performance on complex cognitive tasks whereas threatening experiences, defined as the presence of experiences that reflect harm to the child, are associated with atypical fear learning and emotional processes. However, distinct associations of deprivation and threat on behavioral outcomes have not been examined in early childhood. The present study examines how deprivation and threat are associated with cognitive and emotional outcomes in early childhood. Children 4–7 years old completed behavioral tasks assessing cognitive control ( N = 58) and fear conditioning ( N = 45); deprivation and threat were assessed using child interview and parent questionnaires. Regression analyses were performed including deprivation and threat scores and controls for age, gender, and IQ. Because this is the first time these variables have been examined in early childhood, interactions with age were also examined. Deprivation, but not threat was associated with worse performance on the cognitive control task. Threat, but not deprivation interacted with age to predict fear learning. Young children who experienced high levels of threat showed evidence of fear learning measured by differential skin conductance response even at the earliest age measured. In contrast, for children not exposed to threat, fear learning emerged only in older ages. Children who experienced higher levels of threat also showed blunted reactivity measured by amplitude of skin conductance response to the reinforced stimuli regardless of age. Results suggest differential influences of deprivation and threat on cognitive and emotional outcomes even in early childhood. Future work should examine the neural mechanisms underlying these behavioral changes and link changes with increased risk for negative outcomes associated with adversity exposure, such as psychopathology.

Objective: Childhood irritability is a common, impairing problem with changing agerelated manifestations that predict long-term adverse outcomes. However, more work is needed on its overall and age-specific neural correlates. Since irritable youth exhibit exaggerated responses to frustrating stimuli, we used a frustrating functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) paradigm to examine associations between irritability and neural activation and tested the moderating effect of age. Method: We studied a transdiagnostic sample of 195 youths with varying levels of irritability (52 disruptive mood dysregulation disorder, 42 anxiety disorder, 40 attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder, and 61 healthy volunteers). Irritability was measured by parent- and child-reports on the Affective Reactivity Index. The fMRI paradigm was a cued-attention task differentiating neural activity in response to frustration (rigged feedback) from activity during attention orienting in the trial following frustration. Results: Whole-brain activation analyses revealed associations with irritability during attention orienting following frustration. Irritability was positively associated with frontalstriatal activation, specifically in dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, inferior frontal gyrus, and caudate (rs=.31-.40, ps<.05). Age moderated the association between irritability and activation in some frontal and posterior regions (anterior cingulate cortex [ACC], medial frontal gyrus, cuneus, precuneus, superior parietal lobule; F1,189=19.04–28.51, ps<.001, ηp2=.09-.13). Specifically, higher irritability was more strongly related to increased activation in younger relative to older youths. Conclusions: Following frustration, levels of irritability correlate with activity in neural systems mediating attention orienting, top-down regulation of emotions, and motor execution. While most associations were independent of age, dysfunction in ACC and posterior regions was more pronounced in young children with irritability.

Background: Early adversity consistently predicts youth psychopathology. However, the pathways linking unique dimensions of early adversity, such as deprivation, to psychopathology are understudied. Here, we evaluate a theoretical model linking early deprivation exposure with psychopathology prospectively through language ability. Methods: Participants included 2,301 youth (47.5% female) enrolled in the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study. We include data from assessment points at ages 1, 3, 5, 9, and 15. Latent factors for deprivation and threat were modeled from multiple indicators at ages 1 and 3. Youth language ability was assessed at Age 5. Indicators of psychopathology were assessed at ages 5, 9, and 15. A structural equation model tested longitudinal paths to internalizing and externalizing psychopathology from experiences of deprivation and threat. Results: Deprivation from birth to Age 3 was associated with an indirect effect on internalizing and externalizing symptoms in early childhood (Age 5), later childhood (Age 9), and adolescence (Age 15) via language ability in early childhood (Age 5). Early threat exposure was associated with increased internalizing and externalizing psychopathology across all ages. There was no significant indirect effect from threat to psychopathology via language ability. Conclusions: The effects of deprivation on psychopathology during early childhood, late childhood, and adolescence are explained, in part, through early childhood language ability. Results provide insight into language ability as a possible opportunity for intervention.

Low socioeconomic status (SES) is associated with greater risk for symptoms of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). One mechanism through which SES may confer risk for ADHD is by influencing brain structure. Alterations to cortical thickness, surface area and subcortical volume have been associated with low SES and with the presence of ADHD across multiple studies. The current study examined whether cortical thickness, surface area or subcortical volume mediate the associations between SES and ADHD in youth 3–21 years old (N = 874) from the Pediatric Imaging, Neurocognition and Genetics Study. Freesurfer was used to estimate cortical thickness, surface area and subcortical volume from structural magnetic resonance imaging. Parents reported on demographics, family SES, ADHD diagnoses and the presence of child attention problems. Statistical mediation was assessed using a bootstrap resampling procedure. Controlling for parental ADHD, child age, gender, birth weight and scanner, children in low SES families were more likely to be in the ADHD group. Consistent with previous reports in this sample, low SES was associated with reduced surface area across the frontal lobe and reduced subcortical volume in the amygdala, cerebellum, hippocampus and basal ganglia. Of these regions, a significant indirect effect of SES on ADHD status through subcortical volume was observed for the left cerebellum (95% confidence interval: 0.004, 0.022), the right cerebellum (95% confidence interval: 0.006, 0.025), and the right caudate (95% confidence interval: 0.002, 0.022). Environmentally mediated changes in the cerebellum and the caudate may be neurodevelopmental mechanisms explaining elevated risk of ADHD in children in low SES families.

It is well documented that individuals distort outcome values and probabilities when making choices from descriptions, and there is evidence of systematic individual differences in distortion. In the present study, we investigated the relationship between individual differences in such distortions and two measures of numerical competence, numeracy and approximate number system (ANS) acuity. Participants indicated certainty equivalents for a series of simple monetary gambles, and data were used to estimate individual-level value and probability distortion, using a cumulative prospect theory framework. We found moderately strong negative correlations between numeracy and value and probability distortion, but only weak and non-statistically reliable correlations between ANS acuity and distortions. We conclude that low numeracy contributes to number distortion in decision making, but that approximate number system acuity might not underlie this relationship.