About this session

Saturday, 8:30 AM - 10:00 AM

Biopsychosocial and Intergenerational Insights into Childhood Executive Functioning: Multi-Method Findings from Deeply-Phenotyped, Diverse Longitudinal Cohorts

Childhood executive functioning (EF) consistently predicts achievement, health, and wellbeing outcomes throughout the lifespan. This symposium presents findings from biological, environmental, and computational perspectives on task-based childhood EF, from three diverse, deeply-phenotyped prospective longitudinal cohorts. The first study examines the intergenerational transmission of stress in a majority Latina pregnancy cohort of mother-child dyads (n = 100). Results suggest that higher levels of child resting respiratory sinus arrhythmia — an index of parasympathetic nervous system activity — may moderate associations between maternal stress exposure and child EF at age 5. The second study explores maternal stress exposures and postnatal environmental factors, including geocoded neighborhood quality and observed parenting, in a diverse pregnancy cohort (n = 1,322). Findings suggest that promotive postnatal environments, rather than prenatal stress, better explain variability in children’s EF at age 8. Finally, the third study systematically investigates a computational measure of EF, Efficiency of Evidence Accumulation (EEA), in a sample of adolescents oversampled for neighborhood disadvantage (n = 637). Findings suggest that EF measured with EAA has some advantages over traditional summary metrics in terms of associations with psychopathology and with fMRI-derived brain activation. A leading expert in the field of childhood EF will facilitate an integrative discussion of these findings from three early-career researchers. The goal of the symposium is to provide novel insights into studying and measuring EF, emphasizing the importance of developmental sensitive periods in EF conceptualizations. Collectively, these findings can inform future research, policy, and interventions targeting EF and related mental health outcomes in youth.

Paper #1
Title	The Impact of Intergenerational Trauma on Children’s Executive Functioning Development: Moderation by Respiratory Sinus Arrhythmia
Presenting author	Kristen L. Rudd, Ph.D., University of Colorado, Colorado Springs, United States

Paper #2
Title	Associations between maternal stress exposures, postnatal environmental factors, and offspring age 8 executive functions
Presenting author	Dr. Alexandra D. W. Sullivan, Ph.D., University of California, San Francisco, United States

Paper #3
Title	Efficiency of evidence accumulation as a formal model-based measure of task-general executive functioning in adolescents
Presenting author	Dr. Rachel C. Tomlinson, Ph.D., University of California, San Francisco, United States

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Session chair
Dr. Rachel C. Tomlinson, Ph.D., University of California, San Francisco, United States

Discussant
Stephanie M. Carlson, Ph.D., University of Minnesota, United States

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