Type
Text
Type
Dissertation
Advisor
Hajcak, Greg | Klein, Daniel | Luhmann, Christian | Endrass, Tanja.
Date
2015-12-01
Keywords
Clinical psychology
Department
Department of Clinical Psychology
Language
en_US
Source
This work is sponsored by the Stony Brook University Graduate School in compliance with the requirements for completion of degree.
Identifier
http://hdl.handle.net/11401/77180
Publisher
The Graduate School, Stony Brook University: Stony Brook, NY.
Format
application/pdf
Abstract
Anxiety disorders are the most frequent form of psychopathology in children and adolescents and often result in chronic impairment. Therefore, there is a critical need to identify markers that characterize normative versus anxious trajectories of development. One promising biomarker of anxiety is altered brain activity in response to errors, as reflected by the event-related potential (ERP), the error-related negativity (ERN). The ERN occurs around the time of error commission and is generated in the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC). An increased ERN has been consistently found in adults with anxiety disorders. Although the ERN is smaller in children and changes across development, some work has suggested that the ERN is increased in anxious children and that this relationship may differ as a function of developmental stage. The current study uses multiple neural measures to model error sensitivity and anxiety in a large sample of females spanning childhood and adolescence (8 – 14 years old). Using the ERN elicited during a flankers and Go/NoGo task, as well as error-related brain activity using fMRI, we modeled error sensitivity as a latent trait. The results from the current study suggest that anxiety symptoms increased during adolescence – and that these increases were better accounted for by puberty than age. Additionally, increased pubertal development was associated with increases in worry, social anxiety, and panic, but not separation anxiety. The ERN elicited by the flankers task was associated with increases in child anxiety - specifically related to increases in social anxiety symptoms. While error-related brain activity elicited by the Go/NoGo task related to increases in child anxiety, these associations were not as consistent as those observed using the flankers task. Consistent with previous work, we observed error-related ACC activity, which correlated with the Go/NoGo ERN. Error-related neural activity as measured during both the ERP tasks and in the scanner increased across development in a quadratic fashion, with a dip occurring around age 11. A model wherein error sensitivity, child anxiety, and development were modeled as latent traits showed excellent fit – suggesting that increased child anxiety related to increased error sensitivity, even when accounting for the impact of development. | Anxiety disorders are the most frequent form of psychopathology in children and adolescents and often result in chronic impairment. Therefore, there is a critical need to identify markers that characterize normative versus anxious trajectories of development. One promising biomarker of anxiety is altered brain activity in response to errors, as reflected by the event-related potential (ERP), the error-related negativity (ERN). The ERN occurs around the time of error commission and is generated in the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC). An increased ERN has been consistently found in adults with anxiety disorders. Although the ERN is smaller in children and changes across development, some work has suggested that the ERN is increased in anxious children and that this relationship may differ as a function of developmental stage. The current study uses multiple neural measures to model error sensitivity and anxiety in a large sample of females spanning childhood and adolescence (8 – 14 years old). Using the ERN elicited during a flankers and Go/NoGo task, as well as error-related brain activity using fMRI, we modeled error sensitivity as a latent trait. The results from the current study suggest that anxiety symptoms increased during adolescence – and that these increases were better accounted for by puberty than age. Additionally, increased pubertal development was associated with increases in worry, social anxiety, and panic, but not separation anxiety. The ERN elicited by the flankers task was associated with increases in child anxiety - specifically related to increases in social anxiety symptoms. While error-related brain activity elicited by the Go/NoGo task related to increases in child anxiety, these associations were not as consistent as those observed using the flankers task. Consistent with previous work, we observed error-related ACC activity, which correlated with the Go/NoGo ERN. Error-related neural activity as measured during both the ERP tasks and in the scanner increased across development in a quadratic fashion, with a dip occurring around age 11. A model wherein error sensitivity, child anxiety, and development were modeled as latent traits showed excellent fit – suggesting that increased child anxiety related to increased error sensitivity, even when accounting for the impact of development. | 95 pages
Recommended Citation
Meyer, Alexandria, "A multi-method assessment of error sensitivity and anxiety in childhood and adolescence" (2015). Stony Brook Theses and Dissertations Collection, 2006-2020 (closed to submissions). 3014.
https://commons.library.stonybrook.edu/stony-brook-theses-and-dissertations-collection/3014